Army Fields First Anti-Aircraft Strykers In Just 3 Years
The threat of Russian drones, helicopters, and attack jets drove the first fielding to a unit in Germany, but the 8x8 Stryker variant may well find its way to the Pacific as well.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on April 23, 2021 at 2:36 PM
Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (MSHORAD) Stryker in Germany.
WASHINGTON: Army frontline air defenses ended decades of neglect this week when it delivered the first four operational Stryker anti-aircraft vehicles to Germany. The Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (MSHORAD) Strykers are armored 8×8 vehicles fitted with an autocannon and a missile launcher capable of firing Hellfires or Stingers. They will replace the less well-armed, less mobile, and more vulnerable Avengers, a 1980s-vintage variant of the 4×4 Humvee that can only fire Stingers.
“There’s really no comparison to anything I’ve operated in my career,” a battalion NCO, Sgt. Andrew Veres, said in an Army release. “Everything in these systems is an improvement – the survivability, mobility, dependability, off road ability.”
The Army had 26 battalions of Stingers at the program’s peak in 2004 but the demands of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the enemy had no airpower, drove steep cuts. The Army was down to just nine battalions – seven of them in the National Guard – and 400 total vehicles by 2017, the year when the Army decided to revive its frontline anti-aircraft force.
https://breakingdefense.com/2021/04/army-fields-first-anti-aircraft-strykers-in-only-3-years/
