To overcome this potential difficulty the US Army began to favor high-explosive antitank (HEAT), or shaped charge rounds in the 1950s. A new generation of guns, notably the British 105 mm Royal Ordnance L7, were able to cope with newer tanks, but it appeared that in another generation the guns needed would be too large to be practical.
With the rapid increase in armor thickness during World War II, tanks were becoming increasingly able to survive rounds fired from even the largest of WWII-era anti-tank guns. The name of the system is that of a traditional wooden club from Ireland. While Soviets designers have developed gun launched missiles, the US and NATO were developing guided tank shells. However main battle tanks of the late 20th century fielded improved conventional 100 to 125 mm guns and ammunition which proved effective against enemy armor threats. Shillelagh was considered equal to the later BGM-71 TOW anti-tank wire-guided missile first produced in 1970 by the U.S, which could not be fired from the gun but had a simpler guidance system. Ultimately very few of the 88,000 rounds produced were ever fired in combat. It served most notably as a primary weapon of the M551 Sheridan light tank, but the missile system was not issued to units serving in Vietnam. Developing a system that could fire both shells and missiles reliably proved complex and largely unworkable. It was originally intended to be the medium-range portion of a short, medium, long-range system for armored fighting vehicles in the 1960s and '70s to defeat future armor without an excessively large gun. The Ford MGM-51 Shillelagh was an American anti-tank guided missile designed to be launched from a conventional gun (cannon).
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