Old but battle proven, that's the status of the MANPADS FIM-92 Stinger missile. When it was stored in a depot for a long time and then had to be deployed in the Ukraine War, in fact the performance of the missile made by Raytheon Technologies which was brilliant in the Afghanistan War still has teeth, some helicopters and Russian fighter jets can still be knocked down by this missile.
However, the fact is that the Stinger is no longer produced, what is now is that the United States and NATO countries are only emptying their stock of missiles in storage depots.
Besides being supplied by the United States, the Stinger stream to Ukraine also comes from Lithuania, Estonia and Germany. The shipment of thousands of Stingers (from the US is estimated at 2,000 units), making the missile stock that is no longer produced increasingly depleted.
The US government has indeed prepared a replacement for Stinger, but it took a long time to prepare. The US Army said it would begin testing at least one prototype Stinger replacement design by the end of Fiscal Year 2023. Operations of the new Stinger replacement missile will take place in Fiscal Year 2027.
Based on the above case, several parties within the US are willing to propose options to open or continue the Stinger production line. So how does Raytheon Technologies respond as a manufacturer?
"Unfortunately, the US Department of Defense has not purchased Stinger in the last 18 years, and some components are no longer commercially available," Raytheon chairman and CEO Greg Hayes told analysts during his company's earnings call on April 26. “So we have to engineer and redesign some of the electronic components in the missile, including the guidance system. And all of that will take quite a bit of time.”
Quoted from Janes.com (27/4/2022), Raytheon makes Stingers for international customers and has a "very limited" supply of materials and components for Stinger production, Hayes said.
Hayes' comments come less than two weeks after Defense Department officials met with leaders of eight major defense contractors, including Raytheon, on April 13 to discuss options to accelerate production of weapons the US has provided Ukraine.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on April 26, senators urged the US Department of Defense to move more quickly to replace equipment shipped to Ukraine.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, expressed concern that the US could run out of Stingers, Javelin anti-tank missiles and other weapons if the Ukraine conflict dragged on. "The challenges are unbelievably scary," he said.
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