[kitrose]

I was an armored vehicle officer in the USMC. ATGMs are a long standing threat.

There’s no scenario where hundreds of Javelins are sitting in one infantry company. It’s the type of thing that only makes sense on paper.

Would be much more worried about evolution of loitering fires with drones.

[inglor_cz]

As of today, hundreds are out of question, yes.

But there may be cheaper and better models one day. This war has shown that ATGMs, MANPADs and their ilk have a huge potential, which means that a lot of countries and companies are going to pour resources into R&D. This usually means an overall improvement in capabilities and possibly a reduced price tag.

As an analogy: once it would be considered too expensive and impractical to equip infantry with night vision en masse. Russia still cannot do that, but for rich Western countries, it is an absolutely realistic option.

[kitrose]

Price tag is a small part of it.

Have you ever humped a combat load? It sucks. You’re rolling out with 40 lbs of stuff hanging off you before we even talk sustainment.

Javelin has gotta be 40-50 lbs. Add that on. Want an extra missile? Add another 30 or so.

Now suppose you don’t run into any armor, this is why every infantryman doesn’t/won’t carry one. Maybe 1 per squad, if we want to be super aggressive maybe 1 per fireteam. But that’s now a machine gun they’ve left out, what if they really needed more suppression?

It’s a trade off and humans aren’t capable of bringing all the nice to haves to every fight. This is why there won’t be hundreds in a company.

[CapricornNoble]

>>>But there may be cheaper and better models one day.

And when that "one day" comes around, the tank engineers will have outfitted every vehicle with Trophy-style active protection systems AND laser anti-missile/anti-drone remote weapons stations on the turrets.

>>>As an analogy: once it would be considered too expensive and impractical to equip infantry with night vision en masse.

Interesting that you mention night vision. We used to swear by equipping our infantry with IR lasers as well, for pinpoint accuracy during night combat. Now that more of our adversaries are using night vision, we are swinging back towards NOT using IR lasers because the active emission is just like the old Murphy's Law adage: "tracers point both ways".