The Stinger missile worked against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but will it in Ukraine?

In a significant strategic development, the US has decided to send shipments of Stinger missiles to Ukraine to fight the Russians.

It has shades of the Reagan administration sending the shoulder-fired missiles to Afghan rebels in 1986, who at the time were embroiled in war against the invading Russian army.

Just three months after the CIA put Stingers in the hands of Afghan mujahideen fighters, it was estimated they were shooting down one Soviet aircraft a day.

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Some analysts even gave the Stingers credit for turning the tide of the war against the Soviets who eventually retreated in 1989, defeated after they got bogged down in a 10-year quagmire which left 15,000 Russian soldiers dead and many more injured.

Developed by the US Army in the 1980s, the Stinger is a 15-kilogram shoulder-mounted missile that uses an infrared sensor to locate an aircraft by its heat.

The 1.5-metre-long missile travels at twice the speed of sound and destroys its target with fragmentation explosives.

So what impact could it have in Ukraine, whose army has been pleading with the West to send advanced and powerful weaponry to take on the Russians?

According to Australian counter-insurgency specialist Allan Orr, the jury is out.

"That's the unknown," Dr Orr said, describing the looming shipments from the US and Western allies as "too little lethal aid, too late".

"Everyone is just assuming it's Afghanistan again, we'll give them some Stingers and it'll all be all right," he said.

"The truth is we just don't know how effective they will be," Dr Orr said, while cautioning "they'll only be effective for as long as Russia wants to hold back."

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He described Russia as so far "fighting with one hand behind its back", but with superpower capability to massively scale up the ferociousness of its invasion "if they want to take the gloves off".

Dr Orr claimed the Americans were sending Stingers and anti-tank javelin missiles to Ukraine as a way to "assuage Western guilt" and that the US was holding back "the real high-tech weaponry because they don't want it to fall into Russian hands".

If Ukraine, armed with the Stingers, started bringing down Russian aircraft with the same strike rate as the Afghans, Dr Orr said it could result in major blowback.

"They'll probably cause more mischief than problems they will solve," he said of the Stingers' introduction into Ukraine.

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Dr Orr predicted Ukrainian forces could be pounded with increasingly intense artillery and air attacks.

"Russia could launch a massive air campaign," he said.

Not that Moscow wanted to, he said, but it could "level the place like Grozny", the capital city of Chechnya, if it had to.

"What we are seeing at the moment is Russia restraint," Dr Orr said.

"It has become zero-sum game for Putin," he said, describing a Russian military failure in Ukraine as intolerable for Russia's president.

"He's kind of put himself in a box."

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What to know about Stingers

High-speed Stingers are highly accurate and can shoot down helicopters and other aircraft.

The Stinger functions at low altitudes — under about 1400 metres — and its effective range is about five kilometres.

However, Stingers are not effective against aircraft flying at low altitudes and high speeds.

Aircraft can use several countermeasures against Stingers, such as decoy rockets and strobe lights.

The Stingers are also not as effective in night fighting.

Before the US announcement last week, Germany had already committed to sending it 500 Stinger missiles into Ukraine.

The Baltic states have been providing Ukraine with Stingers since January.