Is Tony Stark not a very good engineer afterall?

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2207cc78d917b55ef43686e3b3282af0

As you can see in this video, those whips are extremely powerful, gouging the concrete and causing severe damage to the Iron Man through contact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFBYy8PFxHg

If Tony were a good engineer, as he is supposed to be, then wouldn't he have realized that Ivan Vanko's whips were better than what he had and integrated at least part of that into his suit. He goes up against Vanko again, but his approach seems no different, there are no signs he took any precautions to defend against those whips, much less tried using them. There are also no clear reasons why he didn’t do more with that. Vanko was arrested, so Tony had no immediate threat to his person that would prevent him from making modifications, and there was no issue of copyright law as there is in engineering businesses.