My understanding is that a stinger is a point defense, low altitude threat with a pretty a pretty small envelope. Mebbe an air defense guy can enlighen us all, but I've never heard of a manpad integrated into an integrated AD system. It's effectiveness against supersonic A/C is probably negligible. That's not the threat it was designed to counter, I believe.

From what I know, MANPADs are mainly meant for low altitude targets, including copters, and low flying aircraft, but in addition, and this according to Raytheon's specifications for Stinger, cruise missiles. Now I would imagine a successful engagement would occur under certain circumstances, but what these circumstances are I'm not sure. So maybe an AD expert could enlighten us indeed.

In terms of re-designing a MANPAD for targets such as the cruise missile, within in a given envelope of lets say 10 miles and with a speed of Mach 4 - which is possible btw, what would be required ? What kind of guidance ? Even though the visual signature of cruise would be small, what other technologies could be employed to effectively engage it in such an envelope ?

Any thoughts on that ?

And by the way, I'm talking in the context of defending a fixed target on the ground from a cruise missile attack, not the invasion of an airspace by cruise missiles. Lets consider the re-designed MANPAD to be located within a 50 mile radius of the defended target for discussion sake.

Why would you want a manpad for a fixed target? Put some real AD assets on it if it's that important. The whole scenario is nonsense.

Hmm...what if all the AD assets were taken out, what would happen then ?

Than a manpad isn't gonna do you much good at all. You'll have much bigger problems on your hands.