The Associated Press March 21, 2003
Improvements to Patriot missiles aimed at making Scud fighting easier
By Brian Bergstein, Associated Press Writer
Just as in the first Gulf War, the new fight against Saddam Hussein probably will involve showdowns between Iraq's Scud missiles and the Patriot system the United States has deployed to shoot them down.
The Patriot had a spotty record in 1991, but it should have a better chance this time around. The U.S. military invested $3 billion to make the missile smaller, more agile and more accurate - while Iraq's dwindling arsenal of Scuds essentially still sport their 1960s Soviet design.
Just a few hours into the latest war, the new and improved Patriot scored its first success, intercepting two missiles Iraq fired at forces in Kuwait, according to U.S. Central Command. Kuwaiti officials said they were Scuds, but U.S. officials described them only as "tactical ballistic missiles."
Such success was rare in 1991.
Although the Army initially claimed Patriots successfully intercepted 80 percent of the Scuds they fired against, a congressional report concluded that Patriots downed Scuds just four times in 47 firings.
A Patriot failure was blamed for letting through a Scud strike that slammed into Marine barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 U.S. soldiers.
Since then, the Patriots' maker, Raytheon Corp., has souped up the system's radar and the software that steers a Patriot to an enemy warhead.
In addition to Raytheon's upgrade of older Patriots, known as PAC-2s, Lockheed Martin Corp. has developed a new version - the PAC-3 - that plugs into Raytheon launchers. Both are being used.
The PAC-2 and Raytheon's Guidance Enhanced Missiles explode near targets and try to bring them down with shrapnel. The PAC-3 - which according to Central Command was involved in Thursday's successful strike - is designed to ram incoming warheads head-on.
"That provides a commander a quiver full of missiles for a multitude of targets," Raytheon spokesman Steve Brecken said Thursday. In the first Gulf War, "all he would have had were PAC-2 missiles that were rushed into the field. They were just undergoing testing when Kuwait was invaded."
Now, Brecken said, a Patriot system can defend an area seven times larger than it could in 1991.
Scuds are difficult to hit because they wobble wildly and break up near the end of their flight. Iraq isn't supposed to have them at all because their range exceeds the 93-mile distance allowed for Iraq that postwar U.N. resolutions allowed for Iraq.
U.S. intelligence, however, says Iraq has several dozen Scuds, along with Al Samoud 2 missiles that Saddam Hussein began destroying to comply with the most recent U.N. weapons inspections.
The presence of the Patriots was credited with keeping Israel out of the war after it was barraged with 39 Scuds in 1991. But the Patriot's hit rate over Israel was considered so poor that Israel and the United States have spent at least $2 billion developing a different system, the Arrow.
The Arrow is designed to complement the Patriot by intercepting incoming missiles at a higher point than a Patriot can. Israel's air force believes it could shoot down more than 90 percent of incoming missiles.
Military analyst John Pike said "it would be astonishing" if the new Patriot system wasn't more effective than its predecessor.
But he warned: "I don't think anybody is treating them as having reliably solved the missile problem."
On the Net:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/patriot.htm
http://www.raytheon.com
GRAPHIC: AP Graphic PATRIOT
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press
