| Daelin (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 10:31 pm 
As I understand it, deactivating a weapon will cut the manpower used by it by about 75%. It will also cut its contribution to your defense index by about 75%, as well. Note, only weapons use manpower and only weapons contribute to the defense index. Ammunition has no recurring cost, uses no manpower, and does not contribute to your indices.
If your sole goal is to increase your defense index to increase your level (and if you only have a secured main, you have no other need for defense), then the best items to buy are either the Missile Interceptor Batteries or the Radar Planes (these are the defensive ones).
The MIBs have a recurring monthly cost in Missile Interceptors while the Radar Planes have a higher cost in number of MLM/LLWs used, but no monthly recurring cost.
You're already at Level 2, so to get to Level 3 and 4, you need a defensive force index of 100 (instead of the 75 you already have). That's about 23k MIBs (with no other defensive weapons), and require 115k LLW and 46k MLM's, and probably require about 800 missile interceptors/game month (for a cost of about 8B/month in missile interceptors alone).
Or, you can use approximately 2,520 radar planes, and require about twice as many LLW's and 3x as many MLM's, but have no recurring costs (just lost productivity in workers).
Other weapons work as well, but they have significantly higher costs in number of weapons required per defensive force index point. If you're really curious, here's the table from the Documentation:
The defense index in details
| Weapon/Ammunition | Index points | Soldiers | Officers | | | | Anti aircraft missile batteries | 0.00222 | 4 | 2 | | Defensive fortification | 0.0458 | 1800 | 360 | | Defensive military airport | 0.206 | 3000 | 600 | | Defensive military base | 0.206 | 2400 | 480 | | Missile interceptor batteries | 0.00435 | 5 | 2 | | Defensive missile batteries | 0.00215 | 4 | 2 | | Navy missile batteries | 0.00217 | 4 | 2 | | Navy missile interceptor batteries | 0.00246 | 6 | 3 | | Defensive destroyers | 0.0068 | 80 | 30 | | Armored vehicles | 0.000242 | 6 | 2 | | Defensive helicopters | 0.00225 | 10 | 4 | | Defensive Interceptors | 0.00364 | 12 | 5 | | Defensive Jeeps | 0.000248 | 4 | 2 | | Defensive artillery | 0.000248 | 7 | 2 | | Light tanks | 0.000406 | 7 | 2 | | Defensive radar planes | 0.0397.0 | 90 | 50 |
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