It’s not.
Its possible, but I doubt it. MANPADs are typically designed to be as cheap as possible (so you can have a lot more). If I were to put money on it. I’d guess it was either:
- Different guidance method
- Better build quality in the stingers
- Different design requirements/doctrines (Maybe the soviets simply didnt have the same 3x target G)
- Overall technology level (Electronics, materials, motors, etc)
- Budget. (Plain and simple, maybe IGLAs were simply designed to be a lot cheaper)
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Its still hilarious to me that gaijin still bases all other MANPADS off of the inferior Igla when the west was already producing superior quality examples of MANPADS before the Igla even came to be. The fact that the FIM-43’s performance is still vastly superior to that of the Igla, a full 20 years before it came to be in almost every regard is just comical.
Its the same issue with integrated crew protection in modern AFVs with Russia only learning recently what crew protection is while, modern western equipment have had it standardized into the primary arrays for years now.
Prop nav in MANPADS and crew protection are truly unknown technology to the Russian MOD.
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Something as well that I would say is rather important to the Stinger’s performance itself is also the fact that it seems that the rosette seeker that defined it’s improved IRCM performance over it’s contemporaries was able to be fitted into the Block III guidance section of the FIM-43C without modifications and was successful at downing target aircraft with proper lead bias.
At the same time, the subsequent motor section improvements pushed the system up to being able to engage test targets moving in excess of 600 knots, far superior to the preceding FIM-43C capabilities, and even the Igla’s current performance. Rather interesting too that the system achieved full all aspect capacities with it’s initial seeker against even small head on targets with it’s rosette, with the Igla only achieving limited true all aspect performance with the second iteration of the Igla.
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As far as I am aware, the Redeye to stinger series has the most effective history of all known MANPADS in the hands of the insurgent groups in the middle east against Russian equipment. Russia MANAPADS are prolific indeed, but have not really had as large of a effect on any ongoing conflicts, EG their involvement in desert storm is considered a footnote at best, with a extremely limited number of aircraft actually being successfully shot down by MANPADS, meanwhile the Redeye and Stinger successfully forced Russia to Re-evaluate their entire helicopter operation doctrine … which they subsequently forgot about in the most recent conflict and the stingers continue to thrash their rotary wing assets.
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This is a complete baseless claim. Most available videos of shotdowns were done by saclos missiles or excessive bullet impact damage. There are multiple videos of the dircm working
The direction of the Stinger’s flight is determined by the phase of the wing movements
with respect to the missile roll position.38 To guide the missile effectively, the guidance
system needs to know where in its roll the missile is. The guidance system may want to
steer the missile ‘up,’ but, given the rapid roll, the way that it must angle the canards to
accomplish this changes many times a second. The principle rolling airframe-related
improvement over Redeye introduced with Stinger Basic was a better servomechanism to
drive these canards.39 The servomechanism was developed by General Dynamics.40
CTE 7
While the missile rolls, the seeker platform is maintained in a fixed relation to the ground
by spinning mass gyroscopes on gimbals. These are coupled electrically to the rest of the
missile body through a set of induction coils. The electrical induction signals from these
35 Robert Little, interview with authors, Huntsville, AL, 14 September 2005. 36 R.G. Lee et al, Guided Weapons (New York: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, 1988), 97-98. 37 The thrust of launch imparts a stabilizing 10-20 Hz roll to the airframe. The rolling airframe has the
advantage needing fewer moveable control surfaces. The idea of a stabilizing roll came from industry,
where General Dynamics obtained a patent. David Curry, interview with authors, Huntsville, AL, 14
September 2005. 38 Raytheon Stinger/MANPADS Briefing. 39 Hardesty, telephone interview with authors, 7 March 2006. 40 Hardesty, email to authors, 26 April 2006.
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coils depend on the geometric overlap. The signals are then used to calculate the
instructions to the mechanical motors controlling the orientation of the missile’s
components. For earlier versions of the Stinger, the coil signals were also used to
determine the rate of roll, a necessary piece of information to control the position of the
canards to steer the missile. The latest version of the Stinger—Block I—has a roll
frequency sensor that uses laser ring gyros to measure the roll rate. The missile’s
orientation to true vertical is set before firing and is then used to compute the relative
position of the missile body at every instant in time. This information is used to
synchronize control instructions from the guidance unit. The roll frequency sensor was
developed in a collaborative effort between the PM, Raytheon, and Honeywell. The effort
began around 1990 and cost a total of about $8 million.41
CTE 8
One further guidance wrinkle is introduced at the final stage of the missile’s flight. The
missile makes an adjustment in the last moments before it impacts the target, turning
from the focus on the high-temperature plume of the target aircraft to the airframe itself.
This is done using a Target Adaptive Guidance (TAG) circuit. The TAG introduces bias
to the signal sent from the seeker to the guidance system, causing it to steer the missile
towards the vulnerable part of the aircraft a few feet forward of the exhaust plume.42 This
concept was perfected for the Stinger by a collaborative effort between the contractor and
MRDEC.43
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA130027.pdf
here is 1983 Stinger POST hybrid simulation report
The Stinger POST hybrid simulation provides a high-fidelity, real-time
simulation of the missile system. It can be used to predict test flight
performance and analyze the flight afterwards. A variety of targets can be
modelled with flares included. The simulation can also be used to evaluate
the contributions of individual parameters or to generate engagement boundaries for the composite system.
diagrams and math quite a lot
btw, why not ask the manufacturer “how much G can handle stinger”?
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The abacus begs to differ, with videos of a grand majority of the shootdowns being from MANPADS, with even a few being claimed as being the far older 9K38 Iglas as well.
I’m surprised that you are not aware of the previous work Oryx has done tracking the rotary wing and fixed wing losses of Russia, Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine - Oryx, you can view each and every shootdown yourself, I am not manually going through all 195 aircraft losses for you, but here is a few shootdowns with MANPADS to sate your thirst.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1683795511172648960
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1576313385343279104
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1541425714502705152
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1572975784720998404
And of course, not a KA-52, but a MI-35M, one of the clearest stinger impacts on record,
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This argument is great and all but provides zero insight or helpfulness towards the thread… lets avoid this going on a few hundred comments. (I’m guilty of this, too)… and I think we can all agree we want the MANPADS buffed.
Oddly enough that roll frequency sensor system was also able to negate the need of super elevation in the Block I version of the stinger as well, per the FY2003 congressional budget report on missile procurement.
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Does anyone have engineering documents or complete dimensions for missiles in question? At least 1 of them? If I have the dimensions of it, the overall mass, payload mass, and the velocity data (so how long it burns and how fast it goes) it should be possible to just compute the G overload it can handle. That should clear up any questions its performance. I will be honest, I am a bit skeptical of the 20+ G overload considering just how tiny the fins are and that they are non-thrust vectoring. But I would be willing (assuming I have the needed data) to toss this into MathCAD and run the equations to check if it is even capable of the numbers claimed.
when a developer says “we believe” all of that realism nonsense goes out the window. They compare 2 manpad systems to a Russian manpad and claim they are the same, based off nothing more than “we believe” not putting in the fact that maybe just maybe the other nations put more effort into their equipment and not lie about it because russia never does that right.
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looks at iron dome, patriot systems, aegis yeah keep telling yourself that bud
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A bit up has the sectional length of the XFIM-92A, but here is the specifications for the initial design of the XFIM-92A per the same document.
While the remaining component info is not present, it does have a full table of the FIM-43’s metrics, running a calc on the FIM-43 should provide a tangible metric of the preceding system which should be inferior in most if not all aspects.
I should note that in the case of the FIM-43, redstone has already done the CAD test for you for it’s target 6G overload.
To that same end you would also need to properly model the RAM style of guidance as direct dual plane maneuvering will not properly showcase the missile’s performance.
They are Russian, this is often how they speak when they are saying “this is our understanding of this”. From there it is up to us to show them they are right / wrong. That is what this thread is for. They listen to logic, they fix things when better points are brought up.
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More about the topic, if they do add the increased G limit and the uv based seeking capability, I wonder if they will raise the battle rating of systems using the stinger… The stinger would be quite effective even at top tier. Logic says increased strength of a weapon system = higher battle rating, but it would displace a large amount of spaa from their current battle ratings
Yes, the issue is not as exaggerated with other planes… I killed some prop plane earlier and then 30 seconds after he just flied to me and shot me with his guns lol
Maybe most interesting part of this whole drama for me is how the gaijin will admit being wrong with their math, they were so adamant with it while denying lesser sources that eventually were actually correct. Or if they will address it at all…
Theres a 2850 pages e-book
"Stinger Missile Publications Combined: Manportable Air Defense (MANPAD) Technical And Doctrinal History From 1980 To 2018 "
It costs ~20$.
Might be a good place to check if anyone is interested.
Im not, mostly due to the fact that it has 2850 pages lol
Dunno if someone used it before as a source, maybe it has some extra docs that were missed?
(keep in mind it might not have any valuable info)
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What would a duel thrust flight motor mean? Like thrust vectoring but only two directions same as the fins?
It likely means that the motor has both a launch phase and a sustainer phase. The launch phase of the motor accelerates the stinger to it’s top speed very quickly (then stops) while the sustainer motor keeps firing for a longer period of time as to keep the missile at it’s flight speed despite maneuvering and gravity, which would drain the speed quickly. There is no thrust vectoring on the stinger.
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