Topic: More and more expensive

johnmacadam

I have been studying the developments of military technology and everything seems to be getting more expensive

the f22 supposedly 300 million dollars, i don't know if that is true.

I understand that surface to air missiles cost several hundred thousands dollars and that anti tank missiles like the javelin cost a million dollards

so leading up to my actual question, which ties into tactics etc


can nations build cheap anti tank missiles and cheap manpads ( or terrorist / militant groups)?

given that planes cost 40 to 60 million dollars and that excludes the time for training pilots, why can't militants just use large numbers of manpads to even the odds. do manpads literally only require 1 man to fire? I have no idea how hard they are to use.


the same is for anti tank weapons. I thought they were designed to be very easy to use.

given that there aren't vast tank divisions fighting each other across central europe any more.

could georgia with a many anti tank weapons have wiped out the advancing russian armoured vehicles last year, without tanks of their own.

or hamas or hezbollah or fatah have wiped out israel merkava tanks using lots of men spread out in small teams to wipe out israeli tanks.

clearly the answer is no, but I can't work out why not

it takes years to upgrade tanks and aircraft, in response to new threats.

so if hamas, or the tamil tigers for that matter had large numbers of anti tank anti aircraft weapons, wouldn't they cause havoc?