"Bringing back the Stinger addresses a self-identified gap that the Army created and has recognized," Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Felter, the Director of Training and Doctrine at the Army’s Air Defense Integrated Office, told Defense News earlier in January 2018. "We’re getting back to the basics and providing short-range air defense to maneuver units." Attaching Stinger teams to small maneuver units was a typical practice during the latter stages of the Cold War, which came to an end as the threat of enemy air attacks appeared to dissipate in the 1990s, creating a significant and dangerous gap that The War Zone’s own Tyler Rogoway explored in depth in this past feature. In addition, the Army has taken steps to make the missiles more effective against a wider array of targets, specifically small drones. The service is adding new proximity fuzes, which feature a conformal radar antenna wrapped around the warhead assembly, as it sends old Stingers that have reached the end of their shelf-life back to the depot for overhaul.

But the extra Stingers are just an interim solution to a growing threat. The Army envisions adding a number of additional systems, including vehicles with electronic warfare suites, lasers, and more conventional missiles and guns, throughout its forces and has been actively evaluating a number of possible options. On Jan. 17, 2018, OrbitalATK, now part of Northrop Grumman, announced it had demonstrated a modified Stryker wheeled armored vehicle with the Anti-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Defense System, or AUDS, as well an XM914 30mm cannon to the Army at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, as part of the latest iteration of the Maneuver Fires Integrated Experiment, or MFIX. The service holds these events regularly to evaluate various types of weapon systems and equipment, with short range air defense has been an increasingly important focus. Those developments also feed into the larger effort, known as Maneuver Short Range Air Defense, or M-SHORAD.

OrbitalATK OrbitalATK's Stryker with the AUDS and XM914 cannon.

The Stryker-based system OrbitalATK showed off at MFIX represents two of the main lines of effort in filling that capability gap—directional jammers and rapid-firing automatic cannon. The Army has already sent a pair of the armored vehicles with a similar electronic warfare capability, but no new guns, to Europe for field tests. OrbitalATK’s configuration cues the jammer via an infrared camera and a set of short-range electronically scanned array radar units, all on a telescoping mast on the rear of the vehicle. The crew can also use the sensor suite to aim the remote operated 30mm cannon, which can engage aerial targets with air-bursting ammunition, increasing the probability of a kill. The firm developed the Stryker-mounted system as part of an $8.5 million contract with the Army. It is possible that it could adapt some or all of the equipment to fit on other vehicles, such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle tactical truck or the M1 Abrams tank. Separately, the Virginia-headquartered defense contractor brought one of its M25 25mm grenade launchers to the MFIX event to show how an individual soldier could use that weapon’s airburst capabilities to knock down small drones. The Army has been actively evaluating that system on and off since 2010, but cancelled its official plans to buy any of the launchers in 2017.

OrbitalATK A 25mm airburst from an M25 grenade launcher round knocks down a small quad-copter type drone during MFIX.