T-72's are 50 year old tanks. It's like fielding WW1 tanks in the Vietnam war. A T-72 is both easy to detect and easy to kill for someone with a Javelin, while

T-72's are 50 year old tanks. It's like fielding WW1 tanks in the Vietnam war. A T-72 is both easy to detect and easy to kill for someone with a Javelin, while the Javelin-man is hard to detect and non-trival to kill (at range) with the T-72. The arms race between protective equiment (armor, shields, etc) and anti-armor weapons has been going on for over a thousand years, arguably longer (like when Roman pila would get stuck in enemy sheilds, making the shields useless, even if the pilum didn't kill the enemy soldier). In our current age, the previous generation of tanks has been made obsolete by ATGM, just like Cuirassiers were obsolete at the outbreak of WW1 and WW1 tanks were obsolete at the outbreak of WW2. Modern tanks with state-of-the art sensors and APS are much better protected against ATGM's. While still not the ideal platform for use against anti-tank weapons, at least they don't get slaughtered on first contact. If the enemy has a high concentration of ATGM armed infantry in an area, it's probably better to take them out with infantry, artillery and/or aircraft. Given the cost of ATGM's, this is cost-efficient. And if the ATGM's are spread out, a tank formation with good protection systems can affort to smash through, even if it comes at the cost of a few casualties, to maintain momentum.