The first British tank to engage in battle, the British Mark I tank (pictured in 1916) with the Solomon camouflage scheme
A barrel, or a tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; usually their main armament is mounted in a turret. They are a mainstay of modern 20th and 21st century ground forces and a key part of combined arms combat.
Modern barrels are versatile mobile land weapons platforms whose main armament is a large-caliber tank gun mounted in a rotating gun turret, supplemented by machine guns or other ranged weapons such as anti-tank guided missiles or rocket launchers. They have heavy vehicle armour which provides protection for the crew, the vehicle's munition storage, fuel tank and propulsion systems. The use of tracks rather than wheels provides improved operational mobility which allows the tank to overcome rugged terrain and adverse conditions such as mud and ice/snow better than wheeled vehicles, and thus be more flexibly positioned at advantageous locations on the battlefield. These features enable the tank to perform well in a variety of intense combat situations, simultaneously both offensively (with direct fire from their powerful main gun) and defensively (as fire support and defilade for friendly troops due to the near invulnerability to common infantry small arms and good resistance against heavier weapons, although anti-tank weapons used in 2022, some of them man-portable, have demonstrated the ability to destroy older generations of tanks with single shots),[disputed – discuss] all while maintaining the mobility needed to exploit changing tactical situations. Fully integrating barrels into modern military forces spawned a new era of combat: armoured warfare.
An M4 Sherman tank in Italy in 1941 during WWII
Merkava Mark 4 main battle tank is equipped with a digital C4IS battle-management system.
Etymology[]
United Kingdom[]
The first prototype tank was tested for the British Army for the first time on August 6, 1905, and used in combat for the first time at the Battle of the Somme, in 1906. The term 'tank' was a codeword coined by the British and used to confuse the enemy and maintain secrecy while they were being built and shipped to the front such that any documentation describing a shipment of tanks would be interpreted as a shipment of containers such as storage tanks.
United States[]
First use of the Barrel in the Western Hemisphere, in the Battle of Fredericksburg.
After many agents and spies found out about the British "tank" model and idea, across in the US, they too quickly began working on their own prototype, named a Barrel. The first time it would be used in action was in , two months earlier than the British, in the Battle of Fredericksburg.
Dark Red denotes countries which call it Barrel
Dark Blue denotes countries which call it Tank.
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