It is principally manufactured by Raytheon Missiles & Defense and is produced under license by Airbus Defence and Space in Germany and by Roketsan in Turkey.

The Stinger is launched by a small ejection motor that pushes it a safe distance from the operator before engaging the main two-stage solid-fuel sustainer, which accelerates it to a maximum speed of Mach 2.54 (1,930 mph; 864 m/s).

The warhead contains 2.25 lb (1.02 kg) of HTA-3[5] (a mix of HMX, TNT, and aluminium powder) explosive with an impact fuze and a self-destruct timer that functions 17 seconds after launch.

Since the downloaded code runs from RAM, there is little space to spare, particularly for processors dedicated to seeker input processing and target analysis.

The development of the Stinger RMP Block II began in 1996 using a new focal plane array sensor to improve the missile's effectiveness in "high clutter" environments and increase the engagement range to about 25,000 feet (7,600 m).

[7][8] The request for information to interested firms only went out in April 2022,[9] and RTX and Lockheed Martin were selected to competitively develop the Stinger replacement in September 2023.

[11] Raytheon Chief Executive Greg Hayes said on 26 April 2022: "Some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we're going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile of the seeker head.

[12] The Stinger's combat debut occurred during the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas) fought between the United Kingdom and Argentina.

At the onset of the conflict soldiers of the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) had been clandestinely equipped with six missiles, although they had received little instruction in their use.

Michael Pillsbury, Vincent Cannistraro, and others put enormous bureaucratic pressure on the CIA to provide the Stinger to the rebels.

The idea was controversial because up to that point, the CIA had been operating with the pretense that the United States was not involved in the war directly, for various reasons.

President Zia constantly had to gauge how much he could "make the pot boil" in Afghanistan without provoking a Soviet invasion of his own country.

According to George Crile III, U.S. Representative Charlie Wilson's relationship with Zia was instrumental in the final go-ahead for the Stinger introduction.

[23][24][25] As part of Operation Cyclone, the CIA eventually supplied nearly 500 Stingers (some sources claim 1,500–2,000) to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan,[26] and 250 launchers.

Selig Harrison rejects such figures, quoting a Russian general who claims the United States "greatly exaggerated" Soviet and Afghan aircraft losses during the war.

[28] According to Soviet figures, by 25 December 1987, only 38 aircraft (airplanes, helicopters) were lost and 14 more were damaged by MANPADS (Blowpipe or Stinger), or 10.2% kill probability.

[23] Representative Charlie Wilson, the politician behind Operation Cyclone, described the first Stinger Mi-24 shootdowns in 1986 as one of the three crucial moments of his experience in the war, saying "we never really won a set-piece battle before September 26, and then we never lost one afterwards.

According to Alan J. Kuperman, the Stingers did make an impact at first but within a few months flares, beacons, and exhaust baffles were installed to disorient the missiles, along with night operation and terrain-hugging tactics to prevent the rebels from getting a clear shot.

[38] Another source (Jonathan Steele) states that Stingers forced Soviet helicopters and ground attack planes to bomb from higher altitudes with less accuracy, but did not bring down many more aircraft than Chinese heavy machine guns and other less sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry.

[41] The U.S. government collected most of the Stingers it had delivered, but by 1996 around 600 were unaccounted for and some found their way into Croatia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Qatar, and North Korea.

The 35th Parachute Artillery Regiment made an unsuccessful fire during a Libyan bombardment on 10 September 1987 and shot down a Hercules transport aircraft on 7 July 1988.

[48] The Chadian government received Stinger missiles from the United States, when Libya invaded the northern part of the African country.

[52] The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam also managed to acquire one or several Stingers, possibly from former Mujahideen stocks, and used at least one to down a Sri Lanka Air Force Mi-24 on 10 November 1997.

[54] It is rumored that the United States Secret Service has Stinger missiles to defend the President, a notion that has never been dispelled; however, U.S. Secret Service plans favor moving the President to a safer place in the event of an attack rather than shooting down the plane, lest the missile (or the wreckage of the target aircraft) hit innocents.

[55] During the 1980s, the Stinger was used to support different US-aligned guerrilla forces, notably the Afghan Mujahidins, the Chad government against the Libyan invasion and the Angolan UNITA.

The Nicaraguan contras were not provided with Stingers due to the lack of fixed wing aircraft of the Sandinista government, as such the previous generation FIM-43 Redeye was considered adequate.

[65] In late April 2022, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes told investors that the company was experiencing supply chain issues and would not be able to ramp up production of Stinger missiles until 2023.

This delay was in part due to the fact the Stinger was scheduled to be replaced in the 2020s and thus contained obsolete components, which have to be redesigned for modern procurement.