MGM-51 Shillelagh

Common card · No. 284197

The Ford MGM-51 Shillelagh was an American anti-tank guided missile designed to be launched from a conventional gun (cannon). It was originally intended to be the medium-range portion of a short, medium, and long-range system for armored fighting vehicles in the 1960s and '70s to defeat future armor without an excessively large gun. Developing a system that could fire both shells and missiles reliably proved complex and largely unworkable for the United States. It was originally developed for the experimental but never produced MBT-70 tank and served most notably as a primary weapon of the M551 Sheridan light tank, but the missile system was not issued to units serving in South Vietnam and was retired in 1996. It was also used on the M60A2 "Starship", which was phased out by 1981. Ultimately, very few of the 88,000 rounds produced were ever fired in combat, and the system was largely succeeded by the later BGM-71 TOW wire-guided missile, which was fielded in 1970. Western forces largely...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Public domain