Which imo just makes it a bigger problem than i thought it was..... I am not sure how much the system has improved over the years but when i look at the patriot, and it's supposed upgrades, i would be pretty worried if i were manning them ships...

The Patriot role in OIF was defense against tactical ballistic missiles; it had no assigned air defense role, but it did have a self-defense role against anti-radiation missiles. The Patriot deployment was substantial, involving up to 40 U.S. fire units and 22 fire units from four coalition nations. Two types of Patriot interceptor missiles were used: the improved PAC-2 missile, which is the traditional Patriot interceptor; and a new hit-to-kill missile, the PAC-3. Both were used with success in OIF, with the bulk of the engagements falling to the PAC-2. All nine enemy tactical ballistic missiles that threatened areas designated for Patriot defense were engaged. Eight of these engagements were observed by enough other sensors to conservatively declare them successes; the ninth engagement is judged to be a probable success. None of the attacking tactical ballistic missiles caused any damage or loss of life to the coalition forces.

They launched another TBM and I was sitting at the helm here on CHAT. The alarms go off, the AMDWS goes off, there’s an AMDWS launch point and impact point, you got the little football moving and everybody just executed like you trained. It was so satisfying as a leader to see everybody executing as they train; nobody got excited. Information was passed, CHAT was up, people were talking on CHAT. And, before you knew it we had a report on CHAT that a battery had launched two PAC-3 missiles, and then it wasn’t minutes later the battery had a confirmed kill. So, it all worked. The sirens in Kuwait went off, people went to bunkers, people put on their masks, MOPP suits, people were leaning against structures inside the building, the concrete structures. Everybody was at ease and the Patriot did its thing.” – COL (P) Anderson, CofS, 32d AAMDC

After the second TBM launch, the I MEF Commander then directed the 108th ADA brigade to move B/2043 ADA to cover Umm Qasar. Coalition forces could not afford to have the port damaged by an Iraqi TBM. The port city was critical, especially for humanitarian relief efforts. Three more TBM launches occurred in quick succession. At 2103Z, missile number three was launched from West of Al Basrah. This Ababil-100 was not intercepted, but fell harmlessly into the Persian Gulf. The fourth missile, launched at 2208Z from North of Al Basrah was an Al Samoud. It too was not intercepted and fell harmlessly into the Kuwaiti western desert. Missile number five was launched at 2320Z and was another Ababil-100 targeted at Camp UDARI. C/5-52 ADA fired one GEM and one PAC-2 missile and destroyed the incoming TBM.

The 32d AAMDC sent out FRAGO 2 accelerating the timeline for detachment of forces. C/2-1ADA was ordered to 31st ADA brigade and E/2-43 ADA would eventually be relieved by C/6-52ADA, a Config-2 Patriot unit from the 69th ADA brigade out of Germany.

AT 1001Z, AMDWS indicated an Iraqi TBM was inbound towards TAA FOX and the city of Al Jahra. This one was another Babail-100. Kuwaiti Firing Battery 3 engaged with one GEM missile, but Kuwaiti Firing Battery 5 actually intercepted the TBM with two GEMs of their own. The engagement was significant for two reasons. First, had this Iraqi missile hit either Ali Al Salem airfielf or Camp Doha, particularly the command facilities for all Coalition land forces in Southwest Asia, the casualties and loss of equipment may have been severe. Second, this was the sixth Iraqi TBM that was successfully engaged and destroyed by Patriot systems to date and
marked the first-ever Patriot engagement in combat by a Kuwaiti Patriot battery. The Iraqi TBM was intercepted by the Kuwaiti Air Defense Battalion, commanded by Colonel Jasem Al-Huwaitan. Kuwaiti Firing Battery Five, commanded by Major Majid Al Khalidi, fired two GEM missiles and destroyed the incoming Ababil-100. This removed doubts about the GEM capability to destroy missiles. The Kuwaitis were defending not only their country, but were also Coalition Forces. They were fully integrated into the Patriot command and control network, passing information and accepting missions from the Patriot command. The Kuwaitis also freely exchanged parts, missiles, and equipment with the United States.

www.naval-technology.com...

Show me your reason for disagreeing.

the patriot is a very complex issue.

Accounts from the field indicate that the Patriots are being used in a manner known as the ripple-fire, where multiple Patriots are launched against a single threat in the hopes that their lethality will be increased simply by sheer dint of numbers. The ripple-fire method is more or less how the Patriot was designed to be operated, so it is not unusual that it is being applied in Iraq. But it is important to note this doctrine, because otherwise the impression might be gained that the missiles were destroying their targets on a one-to-one basis. Also, some of the Iraqi missiles are simply being let to fly unmolested if U.S. forces deem that they will land in unpopulated areas. This would imply that Patriot missile battery commanders are reserving their limited number of missiles for the most pressing threats.

Finally, the accidental downing of a British Tornado fighter by a Patriot missile on Sunday is a terrible reminder of the system’s limitations. Even if the operators do everything they are supposed to do, technical problems can and do crop up. Expectations of the Patriot's effectiveness must be reined in so that such tragedies can be side-stepped in the future.

www.cdi.org...

To begin, the 32d AAMDC claims that the Patriot made nine intercepts out of nine engagements, allowing it a 100 percent success rate. This seems to be the result of a rather tortuous portrayal of the facts given in their own history. Reading through it, 23 Iraqi missile launches are documented (9 Ababil-100s, 4 Al Samouds, 4 CSSC-3s, 4 FROG-7s, and 2 unknowns). Of these, indeed, 9 apparently were intercepted by U.S. or Kuwaiti Patriot batteries, thanks to the at least 24 Patriot-type missiles (PAC-2, GEM, GEM+, and PAC-3) that were fired. However, that leaves 14 Iraqi missiles which were not intercepted. Excluding the one Ababil-100 which malfunctioned and blew up shortly after launch and the four FROG-7s which were outside of the Patriot’s range, leaves 9 Iraqi missiles which were not destroyed by the Patriot. The fact that they landed “harmlessly” in the desert or the Persian Gulf, in the words of the authors of the report, does not change the fact that they were not intercepted. In the CENTCOM area of responsibility at the time of the war, there were 1069 Patriot missiles (54 of which were PAC-3 missiles), and 29 U.S. and 5 Kuwaiti Patriot batteries, so there should have been ample assets on the U.S. side to counter these Iraqi threats. Claiming that the Patriot had a 100 percent interception rate seems disingenuous at best and an outright manipulation of events at worst. Also surprising is that after 12 years of criticism, following the dismal performance of Patriot in the first Persian Gulf War, the Army is still calling an "engagement" an interception, when by their own descriptions sometimes "engaged" Iraqi missiles were not intercepted. For example, the history for March 21, 2003, reports six Iraqi TBMs "successfully engaged and destroyed by Patriot systems to date." But that counts an Ababil-100 and an Al Samoud that were NOT intercepted on March 20th. This calls into question what evidence the Army has for the nine intercepts it does claim.

www.cdi.org...

We conclude that the body of video we have reviewed contains data on at least 22 to 23 out of roughly 47 Desert Storm engagements. Of even greater significance, the video appears to include 17 to 18 out of roughly 30 engagements in Saudi Arabia. This indicates that there is a very substantial base of video information from which an assessment of Patriot's performance can be made.

We have found no convincing evidence in the video that any Scud warhead was destroyed by a Patriot. We have strong evidence that Patriots hit Scuds an two occasions (in WSMR Events 8 and 13), but in both cases we found video evidence that the Scud warheads fell to the ground and exploded. These clips suggest that even when Patriots could hit Scuds they were still not able to destroy the Scud warheads. We also have several other clips where it is possible that Patriots hit Scuds without detonating their warheads. but the evidence in these clips is quite ambiguous

Continued

We conclude that the body of video we have reviewed contains data on at least 22 to 23 out of roughly 47 Desert Storm engagements. Of even greater significance, the video appears to include 17 to 18 out of roughly 30 engagements in Saudi Arabia. This indicates that there is a very substantial base of video information from which an assessment of Patriot's performance can be made.

We have found no convincing evidence in the video that any Scud warhead was destroyed by a Patriot. We have strong evidence that Patriots hit Scuds an two occasions (in WSMR Events 8 and 13), but in both cases we found video evidence that the Scud warheads fell to the ground and exploded. These clips suggest that even when Patriots could hit Scuds they were still not able to destroy the Scud warheads. We also have several other clips where it is possible that Patriots hit Scuds without detonating their warheads. but the evidence in these clips is quite ambiguous (see, for example, Additional Event 3).

In addition, we have estimated minimum miss distances for all cases where we could clearly observe Patriot missing Scuds. We present our summarized findings in tabular and graphical form in figures 8, 9 and 1O. The median minimum miss distance was roughly 600 meters. This is much larger than the press video minimum resolvable miss distance of 35 to 70 meters. To achieve lethality against Scud targets, a system like the Patriot must routinely achieve miss distances of meters to tens of meters, not hundreds to thousands of meters as observed in the video. This result of the video review by itself indicates unambiguously that there was a serious problem with Patriot during the Gulf War.

www.fas.org...

Marines deployed north and east of the headquarters suddenly observe a low-flying missile passing overhead, pointed towards Kuwait in the direction of Camp Commando. IMEF’s air defense computer terminals display nothing out of the ordinary, and no Scud alert is sounded. Marines in the headquarters are astonished and surprised to hear the signature of a low-flying jet engine overhead, followed by the noise and concussion from a large warhead blast.
An Iraqi Seersucker antiship cruise missile converted into a land attack role has just missed decapitating IMEF by a mere one hundred yards. The missile, launched from the Faw peninsula, flew undetected and unengaged straight through the heart of an alert and robust U.S. theater air and missile defense system. Following this attack, the U.S. Marines maintained a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) of F/A-18s over the Faw peninsula for several days.
Fortunately, the cruise missile in this instance was armed with only a conventional warhead. Because of their payload capabilities and their inherent ability to fly over large swaths of land, land attack cruise missiles (LACM) are a platform optimized for the employment of chemical or biological weapons. Currently, such an attack would likely go undetected, preventing U.S. forces from donning protective equipment and taking shelter.
During OIF, five Chinese-built CSSC-3 “Seersucker” antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs) were launched by Iraq against land targets in Kuwait. The attack described above was the first. A second attack, using two Seersucker cruise missiles on 28 March, was aimed at ships at the naval base of Kuwait City. One missile homed in on a radar reflector, the other on a seafront shopping center. Two Seersuckers were also launched on 31 March—one at the port at Umm Qasr and the other at troops at Safwan. Not a single one of these missiles was targeted or even detected in-flight.

www.jfsc.ndu.edu/current_students/documents_policies/documents/jca_cca_awsp/Cruise_Missile_Defense_Final.doc

the AEGIs shot down an airliner which is friendly fire.......things like that happen in wars. But using that as a reason to dismiss the system is just stupidd especially since adjustments would have been made.