High Explosive Anti-Tank

High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) is a type of warhead found in a variety of projectiles, including Shells, Rockets, Missiles, and GPs. It uses a special explosive mechanism to penetrate armor without requiring high impact velocity, making it a good weapon against armored vehicles. HEAT warheads are available for many different weapon systems, including both infantry-carried and vehicle-mounted weapons.

A HEAT warhead works by compressing a piece of metal into a super-heated jet, which slices into solid armor very easily. On impact, the jet can pierce through a substantial amount of armor, sending molten metal and shrapnel flying inside the target's hull, killing crew and/or destroying equipment. This mechanism makes a HEAT warhead equally effective regardless of how far away it was fired from, or at what velocity.

Reactive Armor and Slats can easily defeat HEAT warheads by causing them to explode too early. This makes HEAT warheads far less useful against vehicles outfitted with these protection measures. This deficiency has led to the creation of Tandem Warheads to counter this effect. Other HEAT warheads are classified as HEDP (High Explosive Dual Purpose) which means that the explosion also causes fragmentation, making them useful against clusters of infantry as well as vehicles.

When a choice of different shell types is available, HEAT will primarily be selected to counter IFVs, APCs, and other medium armored vehicles. It can defeat Tanks under certain circumstances, but less effectively than Sabot armor-piercing rounds. HEAT weapons can be used against lighter targets and even infantry if necessary, but may or may not be wasteful in this capacity.

Specifications
A HEAT warhead damages its target using a unique mechanism. Upon impact with the target, a shaped-charge explosive inside the warhead detonates, directing all of its pressure into a conical piece of metal (usu. copper) fixed inside. This focused force compresses the cone into an extremely thin, long jet of molten metal, which projects itself forward at super-sonic speed. As it strikes solid armor, the jet pierces through easily it like a hot needle, punching a hole through the armor and spraying the inside of the target with super-heated metal and chunks of the broken armor itself. This super-heated debris can set fires inside the target, kill crew members, and/or destroy equipment - effectively destroying the target from the inside.

The effectiveness of a HEAT warhead critically depends on the exact timing of its detonation. The warhead must detonate at a very specific distance from the target in order to maximize the penetration. If the detonation occurs too early or too late, the molten metal may fail to punch through the armor at all. This is the reason why protective measures like Reactive Armor and Slats - both designed to force the warhead to detonate too early - can render the HEAT warhead useless. In response, several advanced HEAT warhead designs have been developed since World War 2 in order to counter these countermeasures.

On the other hand, a HEAT warhead's effectiveness is completely independent from its velocity. The projectile carrying the warhead may be traveling at any speed upon impact, and be just as effective. As a result, even a slow HEAT projectile (e.g. a PIAT hand mortar) can punch through the same amount of armor as as a fast one (e.g. an ATGM). This is in stark contrast to Cannon-fired Sabot rounds, which must travel at extreme speeds in order to cause enough damage to the target.

Furthermore, HEAT projectiles are less accurate than Sabot (armor-piercing) rounds because they normally do not spin as they fly - reducing flight stability. Some modern HEAT projectiles solve this problem with fin-stabilized projectiles and even in-flight guidance systems. On the other hand, the lack of a need to spin during flight allows HEAT shells to be launched from smooth-bore cannons, such as those carried by IFVs.

HEAT Weapons
The ShackTac Modset features a very wide variety of weapons using HEAT ammunition - ranging from hand-held weapons all the way to precision-guided missiles. Prominent examples of those weapons are listed below, but the list is not nearly exhaustive.

Launched Grenades
Infantry-carried Grenade Launchers like the M203 fire ~20mm grenades in a relatively shallow arc. Although many different types of grenades are available for these launchers, the most common is the HEDP grenade. This grenade uses a variant of the HEAT mechanism which sends a larger portion of its explosive force outwards, shattering the grenade's casing into many small pieces of Shrapnel. This gives an effect similar to a Fragmentation Grenade while also retaining some armor-piercing capability.

HEDP grenades can defeat the armor of a Recon Vehicle or Armored Car, but are unlikely to penetrate a heavier vehicle (at least, in only one hit). Nevertheless, the explosive power of an HEDP grenade is strong enough to knock out the wheels of a BTR or similar vehicle. Furthermore, the sheer explosive power of the grenade can easily kill infantry near the impact point, and the flying shrapnel can kill or injure at a much greater radius.

Anti-Tank Rockets and Missiles
Practically all Anti-Tank Rockets and Anti-Tank Guided Missiles can be loaded with a HEAT warhead of one kind or another. The size of the rocket/missile determine how reliably it can penetrate armor, and therefore which vehicles it can destroy.

The lightest of these rockets are fired from Light Anti-Tank Launchers (LAT), including the RPGs and AT4 among others. These are carried by infantry, and some models are disposable after firing only a single rocket. LAT rockets can reliable punch through the armor of an APC, but may struggle against the front armor of IFVs and Tanks.

Medium Anti-Tank Launchers like the SMAW fire a heavier HEAT or HEDP rocket. It is significantly more stable in flight, and is reliably capable of piercing the side or rear of a Tank. These rockets are also fitted with a Tandem Warhead that can more easily defeat Reactive Armor and other similar defenses.

Heavy Anti-Tank Launchers and Anti-Tank Guided Missiles are very heavy types of HEAT-firing weapons. They launch a guided missile such as the wire-guided TOW or the laser-guided Hellfire. The warhead in these missiles can reliably defeat Tanks from almost any angle, making them exceptional tank-killers. The largest ATGMs are fired from Helicopters or even Jets.

Finally, Air-to-Ground Missiles are the heaviest HEAT weapons, fired exclusively from jets. The primary example is the Maverick, a radar-guided missile. These are very rarely seen in ShackTac due to being extremely overpowered. A HEAT AGM can take out a Tank pretty much 100% of the time.

Cannon Shells
Finally, some Cannons are supplied with HEAT shells. In particular, shorter, smoothbore ~75mm cannons typically use HEAT shells since they do not have sufficient power to accelerate a Sabot shell to the velocity necessary to penetrate armor. Such cannons can be found on Russian IFVs like the BMP-1. Hand-carried cannons (also called Recoiless Rifles and SPGs) also fire this type of shell.