- Business Insider recently visited Fort Sill, home of the U.S. Army's Air Defense Artillery School.
- Our reporter was given training in two short-range air defense systems: Avenger and Stinger.
- Destroying a simulated enemy helicopter proved surprisingly difficult.
The U.S. military has air and missile defenses that can shoot down threats from outside the atmosphere to just a few feet above the ground.
During my recent visit to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, home of the U.S. Army's Air Defense Artillery School, earlier this month, I had a chance to take out enemy aircraft using two short-range systems, the Avenger and Stinger. There, soldiers conduct aviation and missile training. -Defense system.
My training on Avenger and Stinger included practice with two different types of simulators. They were very realistic, but I found one to be much more immersive than the other. Both were also much more difficult than they appeared at first glance. In fact, it felt like I was playing a video game in expert mode.
The U.S. military has used the short-range Avenger for decades to provide valuable protection on the go. It is essentially a high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle, or Humvee, equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun and Stinger missiles.
The vehicle is equipped with a turret that can rotate 360 degrees, allowing it to attack relatively low-flying targets such as cruise missiles, drones, fixed-wing aircraft, and helicopters from both static and mobile positions.
To train how to engage enemy forces with the Avengers, soldiers at Fort Sill used a simulator called the Institutional Conduct of Fire Trainer (ICOFT), which provides computer-generated battlefield scenarios that require short-range air defense. I'm training.
The activity takes place in a room with a dozen or more small cubicles surrounded by walls, each with its own simulator meant to mimic the Avenger's fire control system.
I chose a stateroom, sat down, and prepared to deal with enemy aircraft. Then the instructor selected my course. I was assigned to protect a convoy from air force threats in Iraq.
The first thing I did was scan the sky on the screen looking for planes. When we found one, we determined whether it was a friend or foe, and after confirming that it was hostile, we fired Stinger missiles and machine guns at it and tried to knock it out of the sky.
I failed. I found it difficult to manipulate the control column and quickly change direction depending on the viewpoint to bring the aircraft within range.
After practicing with the Avenger, we move on to the Stinger.
The FIM-92 Stinger is a well-known American man-made air defense system (MANPADS) that uses infrared guided missiles to engage ground attack aircraft and drones from several miles away.
The Stinger missile has seen combat in numerous wars dating back to the 1980s, and was one of the first weapons the United States sent to Ukraine after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. , along with anti-tank weapons such as: Javelin.
At Fort Sill, Stinger training includes a trip to the Improved Moving Target Simulator (IMTS). The facility is more casually referred to as the “Stinger Dome,” and is essentially like stepping into a virtual reality scene without a headset.
The operator stands in the center of the dome and is tasked with using the Stinger to fire at computer-generated enemy aircraft projected onto the walls within the dome.
The Stinger is a shoulder-fired weapon, and I was initially surprised by its weight (it only weighs about 36 pounds, which can catch you a bit off guard if you're not expecting it). It's not easy to move around quickly to change the direction you're pointing your weapon.
During this simulation, I was once again tasked with destroying an enemy helicopter. The instructor helped us find the plane in the simulator. The next thing I had to do was identify whether the plane was friend or foe.
After making the decision and locking onto the target, he pulled the trigger of the Stinger and engaged the helicopter. Although he managed to shoot down one of the helicopters, he recorded several mistakes. I penciled it in the win column.
It was difficult to keep rotating and aiming the Stinger at the helicopter as it moved across the screen, making it difficult to lock on to the target. Because of this, the helicopter either disappeared before I could fire or I missed.
Looking back at the short training session, the Avenger felt more like playing a video game, albeit a very sophisticated one, than the Stinger Dome, which felt like actually engaging enemy forces in the desert. I found out that it feels like this.
But both simulations were equally difficult, and I left the room with a newfound appreciation for the people who actually have to do this, knowing that I probably wouldn't be a very good air defenseman. I left.
