White Sands Missile Range hosted demonstrations of Maneuver SHORAD Launcher (MSL) Stryker. Boeing and General Dynamics Land Systems have teamed up to build a short-range air defense system on a Stryker combat vehicle, dubbed the Maneuver SHORAD (Short-Range Air Defense) Launcher, or MSL Stryker. For a new solution the companies mounted an upgraded version of Boeing’s Avenger system on a Stryker to keep SHORAD mobile. To update Avenger, Boeing created the Maneuver SHORAD Launcher, or MSL, as a universal weapons interface that can integrate on existing or new platforms.
The US Army identified a SHORAD capability gap in Europe last year and has been moving quickly to fill it by developing a system that will give maneuver forces the capability to defend against air threats from peer adversaries on the forward edge of the battlefield. The army’s legacy Humvee-based Avenger Air Defense Systems are to eventually be replaced with an improved SHORAD capability. The service hopes for an improved capability with a battery in every brigade combat team (BCT).
The MSL Stryker is essentially made up of a modernized Avenger air defense system on the back of a Stryker reconfigured to accommodate the system on a turret. the new turret can mount a wider array of more powerful weapons:
- AI-3s, a ground-launched version of the AIM-9 missiles used by US fighters, with significantly better range and maximum altitude than the old Stinger.
- Longbow Hellfires, originally an anti-tank missile, made famous as the favored weapon of the Predator drone, and suitable for both ground targets and low-flying aircraft like helicopter gunships.
- Hydra 2.75 inch guided rockets;
- 0.50 caliber machineguns;
- and even low-powered lasers capable of burning out quadcopters and other small drones.
The Army is looking for an interim SHORAD solution to field in roughly 2019 and while that may seem fast for a system acquisition, it recently developed an up-gunned Stryker with a 30mm cannon to meet an urgent request from the European theater in roughly two years with plans to field the system to a unit in 2018. The Army is looking for an interim SHORAD solution to field in roughly 2019 and while that may seem fast for a system acquisition, it recently developed an up-gunned Stryker with a 30mm cannon to meet an urgent request from the European theater in roughly two years with plans to field the system to a unit in 2018.
