Electronics that would be top notch back then are considered useless today.

It's a lot easier to make a PGM these days, but people insist on asking for one single weapon to be effective against satellites, submarines, aircraft carriers, deeply buried bunkers and whatnot - this makes stuff expensive.

Maybe all that is needed is to revive and upgrade something like the Armbrust, Eryx (you mentioned it), or something else.

The NLAW is a bit of that, pretty straightforward single purpose anti-tank design. For a semi-guided ATGM $30-40k is considered 'cheap.' 

By comparison I just read a report that the Javelin's new Lightweight CLU is $350k, which is totally insane. Worse, only about 180 LCLU's are made each year.

I wonder how much the self contained SPIKE-SR costs?

....

In terms of cheap ATGM, I wonder whether a short range, shoulder launched drone would be cheaper then a ATGM? Like a Switchblade 600 that only has to be able to fly 1-2km?

The US remains a shameful pussy about ATACMS, while the UK is putting the 'Great' in Great Britain again by providing Storm Shadow.

Twitter

Ukraine Battle Map on Twitter

US is making an absolutely terrible decision by not sending ATACMS. Ukraine should be able to defend and stri... https://t.co/gl0wQFz7Uw

Read more from Twitter

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2023/05/09/no-atacms-to-ukraine-following-u-k-move-00095936

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Shadow

YouTube

British Patriotic Song: Rule, Britannia!

"Rule, Britannia!" is a British patriotic song, originating from the poem "Rule, Britannia" by James Thomson and set to music by Thomas Arne in 1740. It is s...

And in more Ukraine effect / a meme I could not resist:

Interesting.  I was under the impression that Japan is located thousands of miles away from the North Atlantic.  

The British aren't really "the dread and envy of them all" anymore though.

China - Japan - US .Has nothing to do with Ukraine and day by day less to do with democracy as it seems Western countries are racing China for the most autocratic spied upon regime we can still wrap into hair thin cellophane of democracy thanks to MSM propaganda machine.

By any objective metrics, democracy is long gone what we now have are sort of fascist autocracies, folks just don't understand that for most people change from democracy to an authoritarian regime is imperceivable so folks are in denial of actual state . Nazis and Communists said and promoted their model as democracy, same as today whatever regime can pretend to be a democracy with a strong MSM propaganda machine.

By any standard its harder to vote out a senator or a congressman than a CCP politician. Getting a third party on a ballot is about as doable as running against CCP with a new party.

Any and all tensions with China are drummed up in Washington, fearing the demise of its hegemonic power cajoling of serfs like  Japan is just part of the process.

funniest thing is that most Western countries, starting with the USA, are not democracies themselves, both technically and in a spirit of things

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/

and while US claims to be all pro-democratic, they have a long and spectacularly bloody history of supporting a broad variety of authoritarian, totalitarian and generally bad regimes across the world. So, for them the "democracy" is just a convenient tag that could be attached or detached at their own whim.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor for example.

farmplinker2 said:

The British aren't really "the dread and envy of them all" anymore though

At least for today they are:

Honestly the part about supporting dictators while preaching democracy is not new or even problematic . countries have interests, not friends Bismark said and its 100%true

Much post WW2 Europe was in run on the authoritarian system almost into late 70's , Spain,Portugal,Grecce,Turkey and many other countries had strong autoritarian streaks . so up to 80's there is little Liberal democracy to be seen even in Europe. but compared to today most had more freedom in the 80s and 90s than today, Stazi that was so despised in the 80-90s would now look like regular boyscouts. Merger of corporate and governmental powers with little if any oversight is at its core fascism no mater how much cellophane you wrap it in.

Orwells 1984 is being enacted at the blistering speed these days. 

Any ways politicians do what politicians do but please just refrain from using democracy a justification for anything its as real as freedom fries.