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ACCESSION NUMBER:245031
FILE ID:POL205
DATE:09/29/92
TITLE:ADD DEFENSE DEPARTMENT REPORT, SEPTEMBER 29 (09/29/92)
TEXT:*92092905.POL
ADD DEFENSE DEPARTMENT REPORT, SEPTEMBER 29
(Patriot missile)  (400)
PENTAGON DEFENDS PATRIOT MISSILE RECORD
Williams said Defense Department analysts "clearly want to go back and
take the most careful look" possible at the Patriot missile's performance
during the Persian Gulf war.
Much of what he described as "nit-picking and hand-wringing" about the
system, he said, "would be a little more on target if, in fact, the Patriot
was designed originally as an anti-missile defense."
Instead, he explained, the Patriot was designed as an anti-aircraft defense
to shoot down a target "that is a lot bigger and flies a lot slower."  The
Patriot was pressed into service in the Gulf war, he stressed, because the
United States did not have an adequate defense against Iraqi Scud missiles.
 He suggested that it is "better to have something to give you some defense
against incoming ballistic missiles."
Williams made the comments September 29 after the release of a General
Accounting Office (GAO) report which is highly critical of the Patriot's
performance in the war.
Representative John Conyers, in releasing the GAO report, said it appears
that only "about nine percent of the engagements resulted in the Patriot
destroying a Scud warhead, not the 25 percent that is the Pentagon's most
recent claim."
Conyers asserted the public and Congress "were misled by definitive and
repeated claims of success" made by the Patriot's manufacturer, Raytheon,
and by Bush administration officials.
Williams, however, pointed to the Pentagon's report on "The Conduct of the
Persian Gulf War," issued in April, as "a pretty sober look at how
effective Patriot was."  The Army has been clobbered, he said, because of
the initial euphoria about the Patriot's effectiveness "as though that was
the last word on the subject and it wasn't."
Williams said part of the problem is determining when "a successful
engagement" occurred.  "Does the Patriot have to destroy the Scud warhead
in the air," he asked, or can the Patriot hit the Scud "anywhere and knock
it off target?"  Part of the issue in determining Patriot's effectiveness
1eans "going back and reconstructing the (missile) engagements" and how
well they worked, he said.
Williams also pointed to the political effectiveness of the missile system,
which "had the effect, perhaps, of helping the Israeli government with its
decision not to enter the war, which I think everybody agrees was a good
decision."
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