(George William Herbert) wrote:

:Fred J. McCall wrote:
(George William Herbert) wrote:
::Stinger is used in air to air mode, there's a separate product
::version for it even (ATAS Block 2). It's used and qualified on
::US Army helicopters.
:
:Against other helicopters. An F-22 is just a bit of overkill for
:hunting helicopters.
:
:The thread was specifically on, how does the US respond
:intelligently to the swarm of a tenth of a million cheap
:cruise missiles fired by the Swami of Elbonia in response
:to the 1st Armored, 1st Cav, 1st Inf, 3rd Inf, 7th Inf,
:103rd Airmobile Armored, and a host of other units
:swarming across his border.
:
:The intelligent response is, of course, that the USAF
n hearing of this threat fits tens of Stingers in
ods to all the fighters they have available;
:in twenty years, that will be F-22s and F-35s.
:And lasers, no doubt. But lots of Stingers.

Except the planes are busy doing other things (like taking out launch
sites and such) and it would take time to vector properly configured
aircraft after the missiles. No, I think this is one you handle by
giving the ground troops better air defense. It would be both cheaper
(when you saw the threat being created) and more generally useful (for
things like aircraft threats) if you never need it for hunting the
missiles. That lets your ground troops interdict these things while
your aircraft hammer the launch points (plus all the enemy C4I assets)
into so much floating dust.

--
"You keep talking about slaying like it's a job. It's not.
It's who you are."
-- Kendra, the Vampire Slayer