Oh, any Patriot didn't destroy any Scud.
That may well be very close to correct, though it took a few years for that particular factoid to come out. The effectiveness of the Patriots was greatly exaggerated. Somehow, your citation of the Patriot makes me take the rest of your technobabble less seriously, Pete, not that I took it particularly seriously in the first place.
For the 29 engagements that Postol and Lewis score on the basis of video data,
supplemented in several cases by extra-video evidence, they find: (1) lack of evidence for
even a single Patriot warhead kill; (2) evidence for 28 engagement failures; and (3) one
engagement which cannot be scored conclusively because it may have been outside the
defended perimeter. (If the Scud was inside the defended area, the Patriot score would
be failure.) Postol and Lewis are certain that at least 27 of these 29 engagements are
distinct, and believe that at least 28 are distinct. Using 44 as the total number of
engagable Scuds in the Gulf War, 27-29 represents a population sample of 61%–66%. In
addition to the 29 engagements they score, Postol and Lewis have video data on three
other engagements, but they judge the evidence contained therein insufficient for scoring. gbhap-us.com
After a 10-month investigation in 1992 by the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and
National Security, the subcommittee concluded there was little evidence to prove the Patriot hit more than a few
Scud missiles launched by Iraq.
Another 1992 investigation done by the General Accounting Office found that only 9 percent of the Patriot-Scud
engagements "are supported by the strongest evidence that an engagement resulted in a warhead kill." (The GAO
defined "the strongest evidence" as instances in which Scud debris or radar data indicated that a Scud was
destroyed or disabled after a Patriot detonated near it.) Except in 9 percent of the cases, the GAO report said the
Army could prove only that "the Patriots came close to the Scuds, not that they destroyed them." homestead.com
The Patriot was deployed during the Gulf War to shoot down Iraqi Scud missiles over Israel and Saudi Arabia. A myth of Patriot
invincibility soon developed.
Then-President George Bush applauded cheering workers on the Patriot assembly line: "Thank God for the
Patriot missile: 42 Scuds engaged, 41 intercepted!"
In reality, the record was hardly glowing. Israel was so disappointed that it is developing its own
controversial system called the Arrow - for higher-altitude targets - jointly with the United States.
"The only Israeli casualty from the Scud attacks was hit with debris from a Patriot," says Zeev Maoz, head
of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. "There is now a big debate about how effective any
system can be." csmonitor.com
And yet, the image of brave Patriots slaying deadly Scuds was probably the most memorable scene of the Persian Gulf War movie. About 158 Patriot missiles were fired. Each missile cost $700,000. They missed eight out of ten times. When they found their targets, the resulting debris caused more destruction than the Scuds alone would have. But all that was not in the script of instant history. The most thorough analysis of the Patriot anti-missile system was made by physicist Theodore A. Postol, a Pentagon science adviser and professor of national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He called the system "an almost total failure," even though it faced "quite primitive attacking missiles." The displays of thunder and flame seen around the world were an illusion, he said. Patriots would rush toward speeding fragments of poorly designed Iraqi Scuds that fell apart in the atmosphere as they approached their targets. The resulting fireball was mistaken as a successful interception, while in actuality the Scud warhead streaked by unscathed (Broad 1992). Johnson (1991) concluded that the Patriots were "successful mainly as psychological weapons used to fool the public." This success is shown in a survey by Morgan, Lewis, and Jhally: 81 percent of the population knew about the Patriots, while only 42 percent could identify Colin Powell. smcm.edu
Of course, I'm sure you could come up with numerous articles from paid propagandists for the military industrial complex saying how great the Patriot worked. They said so on CNN at the time, so it must be true, right, Pete? |
