From: rteasdal@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Rusty)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Anti-Patriot media is at it again
Keywords: Patriot, effectiveness, media
Date: 29 Sep 92 12:59:09 GMT
Organization: Cal Poly State Univ, CSC Dept, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407


From rteasdal@polyslo.csc.calpoly.edu (Rusty)

In article <BvArGq.91I@lawday.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> viking@iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson) writes:
>
>From viking@iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson)
>
>Hello.
>
>	I was unable to watch the show in question, but on A&E
>last night there was supposed to be an "Investigative Report"
>item on the effectiveness of the Patriot missile system during
>Desert Storm.  I'm hoping somebody did watch it and can post a
>synopsis of what was seen as the flaw.
>
>	Based upon the short previews given, though, the big gripe
>seems to be that the Patriot did not, in fact, intercept the
>inbounds but instead merely exploded near them.  Gee, and I thought
>nearly all anti-air missiles did this.  Last I heard, it is much
>more likely to disable or destroy an inbound if you explode near it
>and send chunkies into its vital areas than if you try to actually
>hit the thing and then explode.  I suppose these same journalists
>think that the tracers from machine guns shown sweeping over
>Bhagdad were more effective than standard flak because they require
>a true hit to do damage.  <sigh!>
>
>	If I'm wrong on this, I'm sure somebody will elaborate, but
>if the media starts reporting this sort of thing without doing the
>very minimum of homework on it, one wonders who has an axe to grind.
>


	They did their homework. The piece was fair and balanced,
or so I thought, after viewing it with as much objectivity as I
could muster. The primary criticism, by Postol et al., was that
the system was good at guiding warheads to the vicinity of an
incoming Scud, but no good at actually stopping the warhead. 

	There was a frame-by-frame decomposition of an actual      
Scud attack on Dhahran, one which I watched narrated live by
Sam Donaldson of ABC News during the war itself. Donaldson said 
at the time that it was a successful intercept, for all that he
could see. I concurred, albeit very suspiciously - it's hard to
make out much from flashes in the night sky.

	A&E showed the same footage slowed down, with running
commentary by Theodore Postol. One can clearly see, in the slowed
film, a Patriot explode several hundred meters _behind_ the 
incoming Scud, followed by the second of the launched pair
doing exactly the same. A second or so after the second explosion,
the Scud breaks up, with the warhead clearly visible continuing
on course. This is missed, again due to spatial lag, by yet a
third Patriot. It's not mentioned what happened to the fourth
Patriot (second missile of second duo launched), but I suspect
it was one of the ones that went off course or suffered from 
premature detonation.

	The warhead continues to the ground in the film, and one
can clearly see the explosion light up the entire skyline in a
single frame, one which goes by too quickly in real-time to
be properly noticed. This was undeniably a miss triply damned,
and yet the Army rated it as a completely successful intercept
in their initial effectiveness surveys. I suppose the huge hole
in the ground wasn't near anyone important.

	I won't go into the details, but the producers also 
hired experts to pull apart Raytheon's defense of Patriot, to
far more devastating effect than the missiles themselves seem
to have had. All in all, I would recommend the show for viewing
to sci.mil readers. My personal opinion was that while Patriot
didn't do all that well at stopping Scuds, that's not what it's
designed for. It's still one of the best theater air defense
missiles in the world, against aircraft - but asking it to
stop an IRBM is a little too much. It seems plausible that the
missile's propensity to explode behind the incoming missile is
due more than anything else to the tremendous speed of the Scud
during descent. If the missiles shown in the film had been MiGs,
they'd be scattered all over the desert.





-- 
||||||||   Russ Teasdale -- rteasdal@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU  --  (Rusty)  ||||||||
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Newsgroups: sci.military