Hold on, not so touchy.

I will admit that when I read your post I took,

"Sure, there are the latest mobile suits, that makes sense, but surely they should have variable configurations as well as a huge diversity of different kind of weapons to use with them."

As, "They should have many different types of suits (different kind of weapons to use) and use them all the time." So I will admit I didn't reread your post, and should have reviewed it more thoroughly before making my post.

But, that's exactly the point I was making. Celestial Being is still a disgustingly well financed organization. But it is small. They can spend an exorbitant amount of money on a handful of pilots. Each Gundam has tens of Billions of dollars (or Euros, or Trillions of Yen) invested into it an development costs. CB probably has the GDP of a larged-sized country given how long it has been around and how high-profile its members and donators seem to be. Wang LuiMei has three houses, jet, hover-limo, and two yachts. Making a Gundam is like making an aircraft carrier for a single person. When there are only 7 total pilots, it's not so ridiculous.

In contrast, the Union, the HRL and on a smaller scale the AEU has hundreds if not thousands of pilots. They can't be spending tens of Billions on a single-pilot machine. Cheaper is everything. They have to distribute the technology. Development also takes time. A lot of time. We have no idea how long the 7 Gundams have been in development. A fighter plane today usually takes a decade to create.

The Union professor was amazing to alter the Flag design that quickly to counter the Gundams as much as it does. I'm sure he had unlimited funding too. The HRL did the same thing with Soma's Tieren Taozi. And she has been genetically modified so that she won't die flying a modified suit. Both are modified versions of existing Mobile Suits. You can't make something new in so short a time frame.