A tankette is a tracked armoured fighting vehicle resembling a small tank roughly the size of a car, mainly intended for light infantry support and scouting. Colloquially it may also simply mean a small tank. Tankettes were designed and built by several states between the 1920s and 1940s, and saw some limited combat in the early phases of World War II. The vulnerability of their light armor, however, eventually caused the concept to be abandoned.