After watching a lot of footage of these Javelin missiles, they do seem very, very effective against AFV’s.

They have that soft launch system that allows them to be used them to be used in confined spaces and to make the firing location harder to spot.

So, why don’t they have an option to separate the missile from the control and sighting unit? A 10 – 20m cable, or even longer, would allow an operator a much safer separation from the firing point.

Am I missing something?

My guess is that you’d then need a suitable base for the launcher and a cable, which all adds to the list of things to lose, break and that need carrying.
It’s going to take more time to become portable after firing, which could be fatal, and 10-20m isn’t a lot if you’re targetted by anything other than small arms.
You’d probably need to increase the firing team to three if you’re going to carry the same amount of tubes

Part of the success is in the simplicity of the design for the operator.

When you start adding wires, separate control units, etc, that increases not only the complexity of the kit, but the time to set up for chance targets, and an increased margin of damage or failure of those extra components.

Trying to set up your suggested ensemble in the rain at 2AM to form a snap AT ambush would be a pain to say the least.

It’s why the kit has evolved from wire-guided kit systems like the Milan.

KISS (keep it simple stupid) is very much the name of the game here.

In my experience KISS is more important than just usage. Squaddies aren’t in anyway mechanically sympathetic.

I guess the benefits of portability, speed of deployment, all outweighs the benefit of remoteness from the launch site. If you’re, frinstance, a hamas fighter launching a barely-guided rocket and just wanting to hit the right town, then setting up and being a long way away is good. If you’re a ukrainian fighter then being able to react fast, maybe fire that second tube, and sight on targets of opportunity is probably better.

Adding to the above, if you are making ready to fire, and your target becomes non valid, or you come under threat yourself, having the entire system in your own hands means you can hoof it away quickly, and be ready to fire another day.

If the missile was away from you, moving back to recover it before making your way out of danger, would become rather troublesome.

Probably H&S gone mad someone could trip over the cable and hurt themselves.

From another perspective, you probably don’t want to have power loss over a cable – from memory the battery only has enough juice to run the cooling on the seeker head for about 15 minutes as is.

Not that long if you’re intending on using it to find the target as well as lock on to it and blow it up.

Sounds pretty good, you can get in, fire (or not if the targets moved too far) and bugger off pretty quickly and re-position.

Man portable anti tank weapons have traditionally been something of a suicide weapon, esp the ones that trail smoke and have a huge back blast to provide a place to target. Everything with a gun will be shooting at the firer very quickly, esp so with the non fire and forget weapons that you have to guide in.

Soft launch avoids the back blast, and javelin had a long range compared to most hand held anti tank weapons (5k depending on the version). So slightly less suicidal. The Nlaw for example is a closer range weapon.

The ukrainan stugna P / skiff does just what you’re suggesting tho – it has a brief case controller with a 50m long wire. By all accounts it’s doing very well. Shortly to be seen at an arms fair near you no doubt!

Just watched a video, like the way they kind of flop out the launcher before the rocket kicks in.

The Stugna=P needs to be remote from the operator because it can be actively guided using LASER range-finding and then LASER guidance, which makes the operator vulnerable.
It’s also got a so-called fire-and-forget mode, but this needs a manual range laying in before LASER guidance in the last part of flight.
LASER guidance can be detected and upset by counter-measures, but you can buy several Stugna-P for the price of one Javelin

The older Milan could have been easily decoyed by a tank commander sat in an open hatch, hand on a string going up a pole to a flare. Expensive, heavy systems that gave the team an estimated 14 second lifespan after the first missile was fired. Suicidal, but as a “thinning-out” weapon against the fake armour numbers Russia supposedly had back then, it served its role.

Having something you can move around with, not need to sit in a shellscrape waiting for death to get a bead on you, is a far better proposition.

Those missiles still need to be shipped up to the combat zone and stored securely. The ambush video with the four man team led by the ex-arty NCO must have included some good planning, stashing a fair number of missiles in various positions to run back and forth between, keeping out of the same places and avoiding fire. They were real close to the armour.

I’ve seen a video showing Russian forces with loads of these they captured from an over run Ukrainian base. So assume they are also responsible for Ukrainian losses?

Not always. You also need the CLU to attach to the tube for targeting and launch.

They are already pretty heavy bits of kit. I learnt all I know about them from this video:

I’ve seen a video showing Russian forces with loads of these they captured from an over run Ukrainian base. So assume they are also responsible for Ukrainian losses?

The tubes are disposable on both Nlaw and javelin, so it may just be empties.

I’ve seen a video showing Russian forces with loads of these they captured from an over run Ukrainian base. So assume they are also responsible for Ukrainian losses?

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the Russian troops were bartering them back to Ukraine for food and clean underwear.

They are already pretty heavy bits of kit

I can assure you that they aren’t as heavy as the guns that we had in service until the early 80s.
The WOMBAT at 308kg, 120mm calibre and “only” capable of penetrating 400mm of armour with 1000m effective range was about 1/3 of the weight of the older MOBAT that weighed literally a tonne. A round of ammunition was somewhere over 1m long for both.
Modern missiles can have 2-3 times the range and 2-3 times the penetration, while weighing about 10% of the gun.
Four rounds per minute for the gun, so quicker than a modern missile system, but you wouldn’t survive for long by the time the three of you had you’d pulled it onto the back of a Land Rover and scooted off. Yes, onto, not behind a Land Rover. The highest point on the Land Rover was the spare wheel on the bonnet, no glass, no canvas tilt, but you did get goggles. It was freezing driving to the range 🙂
Fortunately, regular army anti-tank platoons got the MILAN missile system in time for the Falklands War (I’d moved on before then)
For more portable systems we also had the Carl Gustav (which I’ve just discovered is still made and will still fire the same 84mm round) and the 66mm US M72 LAW. These are basically updated WW2 bazookas