Javelin can fly out to 4000m, maybe more IIRC. The issue is with target acquisition at that distance.

You really need something to counter something like the Kornet-EM. With 2x the range this gives options to the other guys in open terrain. For places like Europe, 3750 - 4000 meters is totally fine. Its hard to find places where you could exploit longer range. But an open desert? And the longer it can go the bigger the thing will be or the smaller the warhead. Tow is a large anti tank weapon. No one is going to sling that on their back. So if your looking at a heavy anti tank missile to stick on vehicles or use in static positions, make it a big warhead with long legs.

There is also the 6000 meter ranged AT-15 Springer. And since Russia sells these things to nearly everyone it seems, best get those longer legs in the future for a heavy anti tank guided weapon. But there will always be a place for something like a javelin. Man portable and fire and forget equals win. If only it was not so damned expensive.

Actually, the 101st man-packed TOW missiles during Desert Storm....they were more miserable than the mortar crews. We gave them mad respect.

To hell with that....... That is a crazy load to carry. The missiles alone are somewhere around on the larger side of 50 pounds. And the launcher.... UGH. To pack just that and your basic load, shoot me. I bet all those guys are walking around on canes about now. But with current body armor no way are you going to get more than a few miles with that. You would be a staggering fool with like a 110 pounds attached to yourself if you are lucky. That is like get on the air plane get off the air plane weight. Not road march around and be able to do anything. For light infantry you are worthless that weighted down.

I guess someone really did not like the dragon anti tank missile.

I'd imagine that the coming proliferation of active protection systems is going to bring big changes to the ATGM world.

If they get cheap and common enough, yes. But the easiest way would be to simply fire more missiles at the target. Most of these systems only have 1 or 2 shots for an active interception on a given arc. Well, if you are trying to shoot the missile out of the air. But moving forward, missiles that do crazy things like maneuver in on a target could always happen or a faster missile.

Dragons were unsatisfactory unless there was vast improvement over the ones we had. Stated range was 1,000 meters, but if there were any course corrections it came off the range. We considered 800 as the max. That put you in effective machinegun range from the target. Slow flight allowed target to ID you and send back fire. Easy to suppress the gunner because you couldn't fire from prone or in hole, the missile just had too much drop on launch as it bounced from one set of flight rockets to the next. Slow launch caused a lot of forward lurch that added to its launch drop. We had reliability problems, but then we had early model. We laughingly called them "dirt seeking missiles"

We humped TOW by using medical stretchers. Worked for air assault if you only had a short hump or were using them to provide firepower at the LZ. Lot of work for one launcher and four missiles, but you did what you could.

@ Ssnake, and anyone else with practical experience:

Could the PARS 3 LR (currently used by the Bundeswehr's Tiger) theoretically be configured as a ground-platform launched system? Like mount a quad-launcher on a Marder?

For that matter, what about a ground-launched Hellfire variant? That should close the ATGM-range gap to the Russian models, if it were feasible.

The target acquisition problem could be partially solved with the plethora of UAVs now available. Cheap, small, lightweight drones with a laser designator.

Its that launcher that is the real issue. I have no idea how much that thing brakes down. Stretcher is a great idea... Swap out the guys every so often and such. I think I would rather have a m151 mutt to carry it...

In every way something like a hmmwv is better, except when you just need something simple, small, somewhat light to carry something like this. Or even pack animals..... To bad i do not think they would enjoy getting chucked out of air craft or rappelling down a line.

Laser gives you long range. But it also tells the target its under attack and more or less, from where from if fitted with a laser warning receiver. Shockingly still a vary rare thing on US vehicles, let alone an active defense system.

But the US lack of long range up to date anti tank heavy ground based missile is all the fault of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its just starting to get dealt with. But its not sexy stuff like F35's so who knows what is getting cooked up. Or what sort of funding.

Its best to fit heavy anti tank missiles on vehicles and leave the infantry with good shorter ranged stuff they can actually carry. Like a javelin. That is something 2 or 3 guys can rather easily carry. One gets the CLU, and the others can carry a missile a peace. And no one is lugging around more than 25 pounds of weapon. Although in a pinch, one guy with the missile on the CLU could be a tanks worst nightmare and its around 45 pounds. Heavy, but that is workable weight as you would have grounded whatever else you had and would just be this thing, your weapon, and personal junk. Probably total weight of crap on you is in the 65 threw 70 pound range. No fun, but you can move in short bursts well enough. Or give your weapon to your buddy and drop another 8 - 10 pounds depending on how much junk is stuck to your weapon. Funny how you get to a certain point and really notice how much a few extra pounds of gear slow you down all of a sudden. Best part is fire the thing and suddenly you can get the hell out of there as soon as the missile is off and all you have to carry now is the CLU. Ya, the Jav is a cool bit of kit. Brakes down into something you can carry well enough, you do not have to hang around after its off the rail, and no lasers to let the target know its in harms way. Its perfect for the ground pounder. But its not when talking about big bad armored vehicle weapons.

I know that's the case for the Spike. The Spike missile itself has a range of 4000m but its IR seeker can only lock targets (for a fire-and-forget shoot) at a maximum range of 2500m the exact same maximum range as the Javelin seeker (also 2500m).
Hence why the Israelis made their Spike missile adaptable with a fire-optic cord in order to give manual guidance capability and therefore give the operator the capability to take advantage of the missile's full range (4000m).

So I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Javelin missile itself could also have a range of around 4000m as well.

It's also curious that the seeker of both missiles (Javelin and Spike) have the exact same range (2500m). Makes me wonder if the IR seeker of both missiles weren't initially developed by the same team/project (or a co-shared development)?

It also could be simple physics. An IR seeker has a range beyond which it cannot discriminate targets. Perhaps a better seeker would just cost so much more that it's not cost effective for that type of ordnance.




The Jedi Master

Considering the general prowess of Iran over the years color me unimpressed. I could jam a TOW too if I had enough abandoned tanks clogging a roadway.

Perhaps that could the reason.
But then again we have other missiles such as the IR-guided AGM-65 Maverick which can "lock" targets at much longer range.
But then again it's probably what you said, a cost issue. And who knows a (seeker) size issue as well?

However even with these logical possible reasons (at least IMO), it still puzzles me how both the Javelin and Spike seekers have the exact same range (2500m). If one missile seeker had a range of lets say 2300m and the other 2500m I wouldn't be that surprised.

Or it could be a matter of "someone" deciding 2500m is as far as grunts need to shoot, and putting the lowest-quality seeker that'll do the job on the missile. Or maybe a more sensitive seeker is also more sensitive to knocks & bumps.

I wouldn't say that the seeker is low quality, it's just 'fit for the job'.

IIRC/AFAIK it's a 64x64 seeker with a dual FoV in the optics. If you want to lock onto things further away you have to either add another level of FoV, or increase the seeker resolution to 128x128 or more. This gets expensive with IIRC seekers.

Humm, interesting!
You may be onto something regarding the seeker resolution.
Same seeker resolution on both missiles (Javelin and Spike) could indeed justify the same "lock" range.

I haven't thought about that...

Yeah, "quality" wasn't the best word in hindsight, but I see you got my drift anyway LOL

Of course Maverick is also fired from relatively high altitudes 'down' through the dense atmosphere with a slant angle - at low altitude the range is constrained for all sorts of reasons - LOS/Seeker performance/kinematic performance - though I don't know how much each of those impacts the maximum range.

If the javelin was just suppose to be a 2500 meter weapon than why give it a rocket motor that will take out to at least 4000 meters? And it was over the weight limit the army wanted. Right there they could have saved weight on the rocket motor. So it could be the 2500 meter thing is some nice random number where hits are quite high under all conditions. Or its simply the stated range but is totally fine going quite a bit further, like another mile out.