The BGM-71 TOW is a SACLOS (semi-active command line of sight) missile, and the US military's principle ground-based heavy antitank weapon. It was first produced by Hughes Aircraft in 1970 to replace the US' inventory of increasingly obsolete French-designed MGM-21A and MGM-32A MCLOS missiles, and is currently manufactured by Raytheon. TOW stands for for "Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided" (or "Wireless" for the RF variant), making it perhaps the most contrived acronym in history.
The ground version is an extremely large and heavy crew-served weapon, weighing about 200 pounds fully assembled, and incorporates a series of components, breaking down into a sighting unit, launch tube into which encased missiles are inserted, a traversing unit, a tripod for ground use, and separate fire control system and battery modules which are linked to the launcher via cables. The missiles are typically wire-guided, though an RF-guided wireless TOW does exist: this can be fired from any launcher, since the equipment for communicating with the missile in flight is encased in the launch tube. Since the missile uses a thermal battery that has to warm up and requires time for its internal gyroscope to spin up, there is a 1.5 second delay between pulling the trigger and the missile actually launching, a behavior that is very seldom replicated in media.
The original production TOW used an M151 launcher, which was later upgraded to the M220 launcher for the TOW-2 in the 80s. Later M151 models and the M220 used a dual sighting system with a mandatory daysight tracker and optional gas-cooled night sight which clamped onto the top, the AN/TAS-4, which was later updated to the AN/TAS-4A. The new ITAS (improved target acquisition system, referred to as SABER by the US Marine Corps) version, designed in the late 90s, has a redesigned launcher unit, the M41, which features a single combined sighting unit with a combined eyepiece (older TOWs having a separate eyepiece for the night sight) with a built-in laser rangefinder, an electronic cooling unit for the night sight that does not require gas cartridges, and automatic boresighting, along with a new traversing unit with improved controls (replacing the scattered controls and traversing knobs with controls mounted on a pair of grips), an improved fire control system, a longer-lasting lithium-ion battery pack, and the option to mount a GPS-based PADS (position attitude determination subsystem) unit on top of the sighting unit for receiving precise coordinate data and using the TOW launcher as a designator for other weapons.
The BGM-71 TOW and variants can be seen in the following films, television series, video games, and anime used by the following actors:
