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To: LouAvul

Yes; the whole arsenal. It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. The US model is to create air dominance, that is, no enemy aircraft in the sky to bother the tanks and infantry. That means blasting their airfields, radar and SAMs, and promptly shooting down any of their aircraft that still dare to take off, using everything from AWACS, Patriot missiles, much better fighters, etc. all in an integrated air defense system.

Stingers were created for a scenario which in US planning should no longer exist, where the US has not gained air dominance and ground units needed their own air defense assets. That was a plausible scenario way back in the 1980’s when the Soviets had thousands of active aircraft available for battles in Germany.

But that situation simply went away. The US (and NATO) was left unchallenged in the air. Stingers didnt get much use in Iraq in 1991 or 2003. And if the Russians pick a fight with NATO now the betting is still that the US will remain unchallenged, and the Stingers will remain redundant.


37 posted on 04/28/2022 8:09:38 AM PDT by buwaya (Strategic imperatives )
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To: buwaya

That’s what we thought when the cold war ended, and we have made virtually zero effort on short and medium range air defenses for the Army. Everything was put into ballistic missile defense with THAAD and Patriot. About 10 years ago, we realized that the proliferation of drones and cruise missiles has changed everything, yet we are still slow to react and still haven’t filled the gap between the stinger and Patriot. You can’t fight off a large number of combat drones and/or cruise missiles with a limited number of incredibly expensive Patriot missiles, a mission they are not very effective for. You will quickly empty your launchers and have almost no air defense. We need an updated system to replace the stinger (in progress), and a short-medium range system like Norway’s NASAMS (which is based on our AIM-120 AMRAAM) to protect ground assets.

Our ground forces need coverage like the Navy: CIWS> RAM> ESSM> SM-2> SM-6> SM-3. We have plans in motion to fill these holes, and they should be pretty amazing when fielded in a few years. But for now, we have significant holes in our air defense game.


45 posted on 04/28/2022 1:12:17 PM PDT by ETCM
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