the deeply flawed Patriot

In 1991 during the Gulf War between the allies and Iraq Saddam Hussein possessed several Scud and Al Hussein missiles, to counter these threats the US deployed their new version of the Patriot missile system, this one designed to shoot down ballistic missiles.

But how effective was it?

On January 18th 1991 it was reported that the first ballistic missile was shot down, in fact it didn't engage anything but a computer glitch, hench a missile that didn't exist, this was to start the long history of failings malfunction and general uselessness relating to this expensive hardware.

On February 25, 1991, an Iraqi Scud hit the barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 American soldiers, battery at Dhahran been in operation for 100 hours, by which time the system's internal clock had drifted by one third of a second. Due to the closure speed of the interceptor and the target, this resulted in a miss distance of 600 meters.

Okay one screw up, even though it was reported at the end of the Gulf War that the Patriot missile had a 70% success rate in Saudi Arabia and a 40% success rate in Israel, however according to George HW Bush the success rate of the Patriot was 97%, this is backed up by nothing and he was clearly talking out of his arse.

There is actually no evidence that any Scuds were hit during the, analysis of postwar videos show nothing of the sort, most of the Patriots simply firing too late missing their targets or just firing and exploding in a great ball of fire.

Overall the correct figure for success rate in the Gulf War is 10%, and we'll accept that even though it's probably more close zero, the US Army were also pretty sure there were some major problems in the Patriot, but why report this to the public, that's what the enemy wants right?

That's probably why daddy Bush rattled off his 97% success rate calling the men that operate it patriots to not have anyone second guessing, but is a missile system that creates its own targets and has several errors really something that is worth continuing to make and put into combat?

When deployed in Kuwait in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 a British Panavia Tornado was returning home with no weapons after a mission flying in friendly skies when a Patriot suddenly fired a missile hitting it head on killing both the pilots, it was later described as a glitch.

The Patriot had 12 engagements in that war, 3 of them friendly fire incidents, it was described later in the war as scoring 9 out of 9, well done guys, what about the three jets they downed, three jets the Iraqi's probably would not have been able to down!

Over ten years had passed since Operation Desert Shield and the Patriot is still messing up, I'd like to note that the Israeli's still use the MIM-23 Hawk missiles to scan and defend their air space even though the US consider is obsolete.

They had given the Israelis Patriot missiles during the Gulf War when Saddam had targeted Tel Aviv and Haifa, the Israelis were so dissatisfied with the performance of the missile defense, that they were preparing their own military retaliation on Iraq regardless of US objections since the Patriot made little to no difference!