What makes a weapon anti-air or anti-tank? Would anti-air be effective against tanks? Could we create one weapon that covers both, or even all possible targets?
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An anti-air weapon generally has to hit a very fast-moving, but easily damaged target. You want something that can punch a lot of small holes through lightweight aluminum. And it has to either move very fast, or you have to be able to fire a lot of them, because your target might be moving at many hundreds of miles per hour. It helps if your weapon can follow a target by using radar or heat.
An anti-tank weapon has to be able to punch through a massive amount of steel (or better) armor, and deliver enough energy to damage a very well-built machine inside that armor. You want something that’s very heavy, and very hot. It doesn’t have to move all that fast, because tanks are practically standing still compared to aircraft, but things like radar and heat seeking don’t really work all that well against tanks. You’ll probably want laser guidance, or a manual targeting system.
Now you probably could design a weapon that will do both of those things. The problem is that it will cost much more than the two separate ones, because making a really heavy anti-tank weapon go fast enough to hit a plane is really hard. Instead, it’s better to just use separate weapons.
One exception, a tactical nuke, can kill either target, but that opens up a whole new can of worms.
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