- Can't be jammed

- Simple

- No radio frequency indication of an incoming missile.

There must be other reasons as well.

I agree with the first and last point, but reliably unrolling a 4km wire while going 500 kmh cannot be simple.

They seem to work quite effectively, I've never seen a TOW fail. Downside is you need to maintain visual guidance of the missile through it's whole flight path.

While I don't doubt you, I will say that, technically, I've never seen a TOW fail either.

I'm envision that classic "look down and see a spool of rope unspooling around your leg right before you disappear out of frame" shtick.

Anyone involved in RC aircraft will gladly tell you that getting a stable radio link for video and control past 4km is anything but simple.

Even a basic analog video signal is orders of magnitude more data than what you'd be transmitting in a phone call.

Luckily, I am involved in RC aircraft. If my 5mm, $15 ELRS receiver can do 13 km without breaking a sweat, imagine what military-grade technology can do.

TOW missiles date back to 60s-70s, so I don't think they had access to tech that good at the time; for more modern efforts the Javelin (from the 90s) has equivalent range and no wires.

That makes sense, thanks. Isn't the Javelin unguided (or self-guided), though? This means it doesn't need wires not because communication with it is wireless, but because it doesn't need to communicate at all.

ah, true, I was misremembering how it did work, I though there was some guidance done by the shooter after the missile had been fired.

Isn’t it crazy how much effort we still spend as a race trying to kill each other.

As long as resources are finite, conflict is inevitable. It would be foolish not to prepare for it.

I think you have to stretch to attribute the Ukraine war to a resource competition. It's about cultural hegemony.

Or cartel like behaviour? Leader needs to look tough to survive.

Donbas region is a major industrial area for the past century.

No surprise Russia wants it.

Russia has controlled a substantial portion of the Donbas for 8 years and has simply let it rot. There's no investment or utilization of that industry.

“The Donbas represents one of the largest coal reserves in Ukraine, with estimated reserves of 60 billion tonnes of coal.”

It's only worth investing once you've really secured it against the other side retaking it.

I don't think the Donbass was ever secure against being retaken. Hence no investment.

It's still strategically valuable, because you're still taking resources from the enemy.

It also wasn't officially Russian territory. They were still playing the game of "these are separatists that just want to join Russia", so it wouldn't make sense to invest anything in what's really been an active warzone for 8 years. Officially annexing Donbas was probably always the long-term plan from the beginning, but for some reason that turned into "fuck it, let's take Ukraine instead".

It also reduces supply of many resources (for example noble gases since Ukraine is the world's biggest exporter and Russia is the second), leading to higher prices which Russia would profit from (neon prices went up 600% around 2014). In the current situation, they also didn't expect to have to wage a year or longer war or deal with crippling Western sanctions.

The eastern part of Ukraine has vast resource deposits that are worth trillions. What makes you think resource competition isn't a part of it?

The original reason for invasion (2014) was access to the sea. Logistics are crucial for an economy.

This is plain false.