[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.

[rtkwe]

Most of the weight is in the missiles themselves at 35 lbs (15.9kg) the targeting unit is only 14 lbs (6.4kg). So for defensive scenarios or preset ambushes the missiles could be brought in via vehicle and prestaged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin

[kitrose]

Not to go in circles here, so the ultimate point here is same as the article: there have and will continue to be a threat / counter threat environment and will continue to evolve.

What we are witnessing from Russia is not how armor should be employed. Armor is not suddenly obsoleted due to tech that’s been out for decades. That take is probably overly simplistic and wrong.

By the way, I’m a big proponent of FD2030.

[greedo]

Only 14lbs for the CLU. That's HEAVY. Someone still needs to hump that around, plus the missiles. Plus all the battle rattle gear. The Army did away with the 11H MOS, so now everyone is either an 11B or 11C. Stuff gets heavy, and rarely gets lighter.