The U.S. Army’s ongoing effort to field a successor to the FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) has seen a series of successful subsystem demonstrations, with the next step planning to put the system into troops’ hands for field evaluation. The latest demonstrations as part of the Army’s Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor program (NGSRI) were carried out by RTX’s Raytheon business unit. The need to field a replacement for the aging Stinger has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which has seen the United States transfer thousands of the older missiles, while the drone threat continues to grow globally.
Raytheon announced today that it had completed all 10 planned subsystem demonstrations for its NGSRI entrant over the past several months.
“These successful subsystem demonstrations are a crucial step in meeting the U.S. Army’s range and performance requirements for this transformational short-range air defense capability,” said Tom Laliberty, president of Land & Air Defense Systems at Raytheon. “We are confident in our ability to rapidly deliver the Army an affordable, low-risk, highly producible NGSRI solution.”
The company provided specific details of four of the subsystems that were looked at.
First of these is the seeker assembly, which demonstrated a maximum acquisition range “far exceeding Stinger in both laboratory and outdoor environments.”
Meanwhile, the rocket motor “demonstrated the ability to extend the intercept range of maneuver short-range air defense engagements.”
As for the command launch assembly (CLA) — the man-portable missile launcher interface — this also demonstrated an “enhanced range for operator detection and identification of aerial targets in real-world, low-visibility environments.”
Finally, the warhead, which underwent static arena testing, demonstrated “precise and repeatable lethality against a broad spectrum of aerial threats.”
The remaining six demonstrations addressed other critical functions of the new missile, including tracking, guidance, aerodynamic control, fuzing, and safety.
The success of the subsystem demonstrations, Raytheon says, should lead to exercises in which U.S. Army soldiers and Marines will get their hands on NGSRI prototypes and test them in exercises. It seems likely these trials won’t involve troops actually firing the missiles — at least, not yet. Raytheon said a first system flight test demonstration is only planned for later this year.
A replacement for the venerable Stinger short-range heat-seeking surface-to-air missile has been in the works for some time now, as TWZ has reported in the past, with the original plan being to get a finalized weapon into production no later than the 2027 Fiscal Year.
The Army issued a formal request for information (RFI) for the proposed Stinger replacement in March 2022, at which time the program was known as Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) Increment 3. While other M-SHORAD increments focused on the development of air defense vehicles, Increment 3 was exclusively focused on developing a new missile to replace Stinger.
A video showing a U.S. Army live-fire exercise with the M-SHORAD system on the Baltic Sea coast of Germany on Oct. 7, 2021:
According to that RFI, “The system must be capable of defeating Rotary Wing (RW) aircraft, Group 2-3 Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and Fixed Wing (FW) ground attack aircraft with capabilities equal to or greater than the current Stinger missile (with Proximity Fuse capability). The system must provide improved target acquisition with increased lethality and ranges over current capability.”
At least some of those performance aspirations look to have been met in the recent subsystem demonstrations. We also know that the Army wants the new missile to be faster than the existing Stinger and more resistant to countermeasures.
As well as being soldier-portable, the new missile is designed to be integrated on vehicles, via the existing Stinger Vehicle Universal Launcher (SVUL). This is a four-round launcher used on the M-SHORAD Increment 1 vehicle and the Avenger system, which can be mounted on a Humvee or in a static position. The rendering at the top of this article shows how Raytheon expects the new missile to appear when deployed in M-SHORAD-based and man-portable forms.
RTX and Lockheed Martin have both received contracts to competitively develop the Stinger replacement.
Speaking in October 2023, Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano, who runs the Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, told Defense News that the service expected to spend the first two years of the program developing the missiles, which would be built in a “very small quantity.” Then there would be a competitive fly-off, with the possibility that both RTX and Lockheed Martin entrants could progress to the second phase: a rapid prototyping effort. This will see improvements made to the missiles (or missiles) and another round of prototypes. After another fly-off round, if required, the service would look to start low-rate production — sometime before the end of 2028.
The original drivers behind fielding a Stinger successor included the determination that the Stinger Reprogrammable Microprocessor (RMP) would become obsolete in Fiscal Year 2023, with the Stinger Block I meanwhile undergoing a life extension to keep it relevant. This upgrade includes the addition of a proximity fuze, making the missile more effective against smaller targets, such as drones.
“We found some ways to buy time in the near term, including, for example, refurbishing older Stinger missiles,” Army acquisition head Douglas Bush said in March 2023, during an online Defense News event. “We think we’ll get at least 1,200 good new Stingers out of that effort, and save a lot of money doing it.”
At the same time, the Army’s Stinger inventory has been in decline for some time now, with a steady reduction due to normal training and test and evaluation requirements now compounded by the war in Ukraine. This has seen the U.S. military transfer thousands of these missiles to Ukraine, which has an urgent need for air defense equipment.
The dwindling missile inventory in the United States across the board has led to broader questions about the feasibility of replenishing these stocks, or surging production if more missiles are required, as you can read more about in this previous TWZ piece. As far as Stinger is concerned, the production of all-up missile rounds can no longer be undertaken, with all work now focusing on modernizing existing missiles.
All this taken together helped the Army decide to develop a Stinger replacement, although it’s still unclear exactly how much of the older Raytheon system might have made its way into that company’s NGSRI offering.
Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine has only further underlined the need for more capable SHORAD capabilities for the U.S. military. In particular, the threat posed by small drones, which is very much a reality now and only continues to grow, has already shown the need for improved SHORAD systems, and in significant numbers. The generally parlous state of the U.S. military’s SHORAD enterprise is something we have discussed in this previous TWZ feature.
All in all, while many details of the Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor are still to be revealed, the program is fast-emerging as one of the most important for the U.S. military as it seeks to optimize its short-range air defense capabilities to better meet current and emerging threats.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com