Deliveries of American armaments to support Ukraine since the invasion of its territory by Russia, at the end of last February, have had the consequence of depleting stocks. The Pentagon has therefore decided to reconstitute them.
The Ministry of Defense has announced that it has signed a $625 million contract with Raytheon to deliver 1,468 Stinger missiles. With options, the order value could reach 687 million. The Pentagon thus wants to compensate for the 1,400 copies of this light and autonomous weapon delivered by the American army to Ukraine, pending the development of a missile of the same type but of a new generation.
Fired from the shoulder, the Stinger surface-to-air missile can be deployed quickly to defend against attacks from helicopters, planes and drones and even cruise missiles. The Stingers used by the Ukrainian forces succeeded in stopping many Russian assaults.
This order is the first placed by the Pentagon for eighteen years, specifies Raytheon, which had recorded contracts in July 2021 from international customers. It was thanks to this contract that the last manufacturing site, based in Arizona, was reopened (after having been closed at the end of 2020), but it will take one to two years before it is back up to full speed. This, due to a lack of available parts. Raytheon will also have to “redesign part of the electronics of the homing missile”. The first deliveries for the US Army are planned within thirty months.
