Defense News:
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is getting close to greenlighting Stinger missiles that are more lethal against enemy drones following a string of successful tests last month.
The Cruise Missile Defense Systems Project Office, or CMDS, demonstrated a new proximity warhead capability on a Stinger missile during flight testing at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, over a three-week period in August.
The first two weeks of the test event were focused on characterizing the capability of the proximity warhead against static drone targets. In the final week, the proximity fuze-equipped Stingers went up against nine free-flying unmanned aircraft systems ranging from small to roughly 1,000-pound variants — about the size of a Shadow UAS — according to Wayne Leonard, the product lead for Stinger-based systems at CMDS.
The Stinger missiles were fired from man-portable air-defense systems and Avenger launcher systems to show they can be safely fired from both…
