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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Anti air missiles use different types of seeker heads to go after planes usually radar or heat seeking to track planes. The explosive in the missiles are not that powerful but designed to create lots of sharpnel; this isn’t an issue because planes are light weight and as such are shredded by shrapnel. Also Anti air missiles are designed to be very fast and maneuverable in order to engage aircraft effectively which needless to say can move around very quickly and are hard to hit manually
Anti tank missiles on the other hand tend to be slower rely on manual aim (not always the case some are self guiding but that’s rare and expensive) and are designed with a heavy warhead specifically designed to apply as much force to a small area as possible in order to break the tanks armor and kill the crew/detonate fuel and ammo.
Is it possible to have a missile that can effectively engage both planes and tanks yes but they are really big and not very practical and very expensive look up ADATS for an example of such a weapon system from the 1980s.
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