I've commented on this before but part of the reason the military forces (including Kingdom defenses) has been because with the tight budget & deadlines the show hasn't really had room to spare for any action that doesn't involve important characters. It's why battle scenes tend to boil down to a few scenes here and there of soldiers shooting at stuff and maybe the occasional airship but otherwise it's just heroes doing heroic stuff. With the biggest notable exceptions being when the military stuff was the enemy (Black Trailer, stolen Paladins, hacked Paladins, Colossus) and for that reason I've been looking forward to the inevitable conflict between the heroes and either Atlas as a whole or the SDC in particular.
I think its likely that next volume will show us a lot more of the good stuff that Atlas should have access too, such as Paladins or other big mechs:
mooks with sniper rifles and miniguns, maybe grenades and rocket launchers and stuff too
(or even jetpacks based on that Chinese mobile game)
possibly some more elite robot units
maybe a chance to see those giant battleships/carriers in action.
or even some of the more obscure stuff like the mines and turrets from Amity Arena
Now I've mostly been thinking of this from a "
this could give a lot of cool fight scenes and give more world building on Remnant military forces" perspective. However while I think the cause would primarily be a Doylist lack of resources it would be very fitting from a Watsonian perspective if the story has Atlas bring out all it's biggest guns and shiniest toys, not to defend Mantle, maybe not even to fight Salem, but to hunt down PennyRWBY so that Ironwood can complete his "
Screw you, got mine!" plan.
It would be such a perfect summation of how screwed up Atlas is if it had a shitload of fancy military equipment that could have prevented all those Grimm attacks that caused this entire mess from happening, but held it back because the slightest risk of any harm coming to Atlas City is unacceptable while all of Mantle is an acceptable casualty (Mantle? What's that? Some sort of fish?).