From my scattered recollections: the actual doctrinal use of Javelins is in infantry squads as part of a large mechanized assault. That's what they were used for in Iraq, for infantry moving alongside tanks and APCs to take out enemy armor that they spot while the tanks destroy static entrenched positions and machine gun nests - which worked great in the context of a continuous advance with air and armor support, when you're encountering tanks one at a time along an actual front line with contact distances in the hundreds of meters and can be constantly resupplied with new missiles, essentially just sweeping up an enemy you already have on the operational backfoot. But this was obviously never the case in Ukraine, so instead they seem to have been used in two scenarios:

• Firstly, in Russia's initial dash for Kiev when they had long armored columns travelling single file down main roads, small squads of Ukrainian soldiers would jump out of a bush and hit the column from the side and take out a tank. Then, because the soldiers had no support or cover, the rest of the tanks would immediately return fire and wipe them out. From the NATO perspective this equation made perfect sense, because the soldiers are just as disposable as the launchers and looking at the dollar value of launcher + Ukrainian vs Russian tank + three tankers it's clearly a win. But, the mission was still guaranteed suicide (though whether that would make any difference, when your soldiers are Nazi fanatics or forced at gunpoint or you just don't let them find out, who knows) and then the big armored columns dispersed as soon as the April peace deal failed anyway.

• Secondly, they were used in urban combat in Mariupol for guerilla strikes on tanks, another situation which they were not designed for. Compared with an RPG they're very bulky, with each missile on its own weighing similar to a loaded RPG-7, and (most crucially) they have an arming distance that is longer than most urban sight lines that can be used by guerillas. I've seen footage on telegram of a Javelin being fired from above at the rear of a tank and just splattering against the hull without detonating, at the same distance that an RPG would probably have killed the engine. And an RPG you can take a potshot from inside a building and immediately be scrambling away, while a Javelin has to lock on and have a clear firing line for the missile to maneuver out, hugely lessening the survival chances of the attacker. They're a weapon for when you're advancing alongside your tank at street level and your scouts mark an enemy tank in place at the other end of the next street, not for ambushing that exact scenario from the other side. All of which was moot as soon as Azov was driven down into the steel plant.

So their actual ideal use conditions never existed, and even the suboptimal cases they could be used in at all disappeared within a couple of months. Everything since then has been grinding artillery-focused attrition, or house to house infantry clearing in Bakhmut Artyomovsk - and now the counterattack is exactly where I would expect them to start being used again, but so far the majority of attacks seem to be unsupported tank rushes straight into Russian minefields, and though I did hear about smaller infantry units supposedly sneaking around through woodlands towards the Russian lines, there's been nothing about any success from that or whether they had Javelins, or if they'd even encounter anything to use them on or just static defenses. Russia has also been constantly blowing up arms depots, and Javelins sell pretty well on the black market, and some Nazi groups have probably secreted a few for terror attacks in central Europe over the next few years, and the stockpiles of the whole of Europe seem to have been cleared out so maybe the Ukrainians really don't have enough left to make any kind of doctrine out of.

OG wunderwaffen?

Thinking about the Bayraktars, they are actually good drones and were a game changer in the Azeri-Armenia War, as well as Turkiye's war against the PKK. What both of those scenarios have in common is an enemy that doesn't have much in terms of air defenses or air forces for that matter. Which is why this type of drone also did great in the last Ethiopian Civil War and dealt good damage against the Russians during their thunder runs towards Kiyv.

That's the real problem with wunderwaffen. None of these weapons are useless. They are just not magical solutions to the front because for all the problems of the Russian Army it does amount to more than just a light infantry insurgency.

You've got the good (HIMARS), the bad (Phoenix Ghost and Switchblade), and the ugly (Patriots crashing into residential buildings)

Russia stopped lining their tanks up in columns to be sitting ducks from javelin flank attacks

to my knowledge the slat armor cages weren't ever to stop javelins, that was a pure dumbass fabrication using the most reddit brain logic (russia are stupid dummies, ukraine has javelins that attack from above, therefore these cages are a stupid attempt to stop them) and instead the cages were there to stop light drone based attacks

I remember seeing a lot of javelins failing to launch and just thudding into the ground in front of the shooter, and also some javelins popping immediately on launch or just after. I think they gave away all the old/expired ones and there were a lot of duds before they used them all up.

I am not an expert, but I think a sturdy "cope cage" combined with reactive armor bricks below it should be able to stop a Javelin missile. Also, I think they have supply issues with Javelins.