I dont have any hands on with the Gustav, but as for the SMAW, I can at least say that we finally got a replacement for the M20 3.5in super bazooka in the 80s. Now with that said....
SMAW is loud as hell and has almost twice the backblast danger area that my TOW does. SMAW gunners really have to keep this in mind as well as anyone else in the area. I remember when I was going through the School of Infantry and doing our final exercise, our SgtMaj got too close to one of the student gunners firing a live round and it tumbled our SgtMaj, and he was standing (well, walking before the incident) almost fifty yards away. Fortunately and to our complete amazement he wasnt badly hurt.
The other thing about SMAW is that until seeing this video there were 2 types of rounds, the HEDP (high explosive dual purpose) and HEAA (high explosive anti-armor). The HEDP round was pretty good against bunkers and light vehicles but we didnt see much appreciable damage to the M48s we used to practice on at Pendleton. Our SMAW gunners when I was in rarely saw the HEAA rounds, even in the sandbox. It was told to us that the HEAA would penetrate a T72 from the front; we had a good laugh about that one until we found out the some of our Scout Snipers were getting penetrations to the rear turrets of the T72s and T55s. Still, we are talking about the rear of the vehicle....
Point there being was that I know at least a few of us wanted to give the Gustav a try, or get on the road with getting more types of rounds for the SMAW.
The one thing I used to love about SMAW (with the few rounds Ive fired through it) was the spotting rifle. It fired this quirky round that I was told was a 9mm tracer crimped onto a 7.62mm case. Anyway, it was supposed to have the same general flight characteristics as the rocket did. You fire spotting rounds until youre on target and then let the rocket go; at least that was the theory. Anyone in the infantry will tell you that tracers work both ways. In either case more than one rocket would jolt the launcher enough to blow the boresight.
...So after watching this video (can we say cheese? LOL) I did a little more research and it seems that some of SMAWs problems are being fixed...
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...round/smaw.htm