[Pelic4n]

$4M tanks are defeated by a $40K NLAW. Much like cuirassiers cavalry who were rendered obsolete by muskets becoming rifles with increased penetration, it's not because tanks don't works, it's because it's so cheap to kill one and so expensive to make one.

Until very recently, 2 guys hiding in a bush couldn't kill a tank, you needed a predator drone, an helicopter or some other advanced system requiring heavy logistics. Now behind every bush and every road corner is a potential enemy able to defeat you. With >90% kill ratio for javelins, the tanks needs to be lucky for weeks on end to survive, and the ATGM needs to be lucky only once.

[fork1]

A guy hiding in a bush was able to defeat tanks since the invention of HEAT in WW2. Before that, they were other ways as well.

[Pelic4n]

Correction: A guy hiding in a bush wasn't able to reliably defeat tanks before.

Handheld old anti-tank weapons like RPGs with HEAT warheads were extremely unreliable, defeated by reactive explosive armors, successful only at very close range and so on. Modern ATGMs able to be fired from kilometers away and with >90% kill rates completely changes the dynamic. Those systems are only going to get smarter and cheaper when there is a physical limit on the armor+weight+cost+logistical support equation for tanks.

[fork1]

I would be wary of those numbers. There is a heavy selection bias, as we don't see the videos where the AT weapons fails, where the operator gets shot, etc. We'll have better information once the fog of war lifts.