Great, *another* new sales pitch for the Patriot. First this SAM system was re-purposed as an ABM (badly, as it's 1% pK Ratio against Scuds in Operation Desert Storm shows), and now it's oversold for use against low-flying targets as well.

 

Fat chance, given that the MIM-104 missile's aerodynamics, guidance, engine, warhead, and flight profile are completely optimized for high-speed, high altitude interceptions, to the point of Crippling Overspecialization --- to say nothing of the fact that an emplaced Patriot launcher has negligible traversal, and no depression below it's launch angle of 45 degrees.

 

Moreover, cruise missiles and (target) drones are low-hanging fruit. The Iraqi Army and IQAF was able to shoot-down a dozen of the former with 1960s weapons and technology in 1991, and the Taliban were able to defeat the latter with rifle fire as early as 2002. You could shoot-down these pushovers with with an AA gun that costs less than a single $6 Million MIM-104 Patriot missile round;

Would you & the other Soldiers for the Truth types care to discuss the various Mark's of "Patriot" to refine your carping or will you let it stand as is?

 

Also, would you care to provide a comparison of Patriot-Equivalent Systems that have performed BETTER?  Or will you just rant against Patriot without providing a comparator?

You're talking crazy bud. I know militaries tend to keep mum about such things, but the IDF did report downing 3 UAV's during the war. I was reading reports. There was no mention of firing hundreds of patriots and I'm pretty sure something like that would've been noticed. No idea where you get your figures, but sighting sources when making such claims would help.

AA guns couldn't shoot down flying spit over 1km high, never mind hitting a moving manoeuvring UAV. 

Never mind him, guys. He uses these 'EXPERTS" as his sources.    

 

What did I TELL YOU about doing the work?

 

quote>:>

 

 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.

 

<<unquote.

 

87% PK friends. How's THAT for a missile?  

 

 

Actually, given the Patriot's prior performance in OPDS, an 8% pK Ratio (the best ever achieved by any missile in history was 25%, by the Sidewinder in ODS) is completely impluasible;

 

In the finest traditions of the Pentagon (e.g., the Vietnam Body Count), the initial claimed pK Ratio of the Patriot was 90%;

"Beginning with the first Scud launched in Saudi Arabia, right onto Saudi Arabia -- and the Patriot that struck it down -- and with the arrival of Patriot battalions in Israel, all told, Patriot is 41 for 42: 42 Scuds engaged, 41 intercepted"

--- Raytheon, February 1991

 

But then evidence surfaced that these glowering claims were bold-faced lies;

 

"The results of these studies are disturbing. They suggest that Patriot's intercept rate during the Gulf War was very low. The evidence from these preliminary studies indicate that Patriot's intercept rate could be much lower than 10 percent, possibly even zero. ...I will show you during the course of my presentation, most of the Patriot miss distances are so large that even press video is able to provide unambiguous evidence of misses."

--- Theodore Postol, MIT scientist testifying before Congress on April 7th 1992

 

Further analysis proved that the Patriot had only scored 2 confirmed hits in all of ODS, but still failed to destroy (let alone *defeat*) the Scud missiles;

 

"We found no convincing evidence in the video that any Scud warhead was destroyed by a Patriot. We have strong evidence that Patriots hit Scuds on two occasions, but in both cases the videos also show that the Scud warheads fell to the ground and exploded. These clips provide strong evidence that even when Patriots could hit Scuds they were still not able to destroy Scud warheads.

...

The overselling of the Patriot and subsequent cover-up of it's failure --- followed by the US Army'seventual de-facto admission that it didn't work --- is also eerily similar to the failure of the Javelin missile in the Falklands.

 

It was claimed by T Headquarter Battery (Shah Shuja's Troop) Royal Artillery during the war that the Rapier had achieved 14 confirmed kills and 6 probable kills. Suspiciously, they didn't let-on how many Rapiers were launched (there were Rapier 20 launches).

 

http://www.naval-history.net/F64argaircraftlost.htm

 

A couple of things to NOTE about BT's latest cow manure.

 

1. AMRAAM has a combat kill PK of 60%.

2. HAWK has a combat kill PK of 39%.

3. IHAWK has a combat kill PK of 47%.

4. SPARROW (all iterations all times) has the combat kill of 23% that BT erroneously claimed was for Sidewinder.

5. And SIDEWINDER the previous benchmark before AMRAAM has a PK in combat of 47-59 % ALL ITERATIONS in wars that stretch down through sixty years.

 

And by ALL ITERATIONS I also mean the Israeli, British, Red Chinese and RUSSIAN reverse engineered copies of that oh so deadly missile.  

 

6. Patriot and Standard ALL ITERATIONS in combat  is DEADLY at ~ 80%.+

-----------------

Rapier was a point defense missile (a poor one, with a badly designed cue and point radar, with an EO tracker too slow and no lead pursuit logics in the missile which still managed a decent 12% PK kill for the terrible short ranged point and shoot lag pursuit missile that it was. \\ 

 

CROTALE (French) was much better with a Sparrow like PK and radar track lead logic to go with that performance. 

 

I more or less covered  all of this in a thread about the Falklands War and about missile combat a few months back.

 

BT may make up all the BEE-ESS he claims about missiles or cite irrelevancies to this topic all he wants, but now he stumbles into MY AREA of knowledge.  

 

And when he does THAT, I laugh at him. 

No missiles have ever demonstrated pKs in excess of 25%. That's in the realm of gunfire pKs.

"2. HAWK has a combat kill PK of 39%. ... 3. IHAWK has a combat kill PK of 47%."
The IDF launched 75 Hawks in the Yom Kippur war, resulting in only 12 confirmed and 12 probable kills.  That's a 16% pK Ratio, which is phenomenal for a radar-guided SAM designed for BVR engagements --- but not 47%. You're off by a factor of 5.


"1. AMRAAM has a combat kill PK of 60%. "
Every AMRAAM launch in history has been WVR (Within Visual Range), not in the BVR (Beyond Visual Range) regime that was this missile's purpose in the first place. They were also carefully coordinated by a long chain of command via AWACS, a luxury unlikely to be possible in an air war against an enemy that fights back with more than 5 aircraft. Yet, 2 of these were friendly fire (18% of all AMRAAM kills).

That amounts to only 9 relevant kills by the AMRAAM... so far. That's a far cry from the Sidewinder's 270 confirmed kills;


"4. SPARROW (all iterations all times) has the combat kill of 23% that BT erroneously claimed was for Sidewinder."

A study titled "An analysis of Air-to-Air Missile capability in Southeast Asia" (Robert D. Goartz, Maxwell AFB, 1968) indicates a pK Ratio pf only 8.9% on average in the Vietnam War, from 1965 to 1968. This is lower than the pK Ratio demonstrated for the AIM-4 Falcon in the same study (a 9.3% pK Ratio), and the USAF stopped using the Falcon on it's F-4 Phantom IIs on the rationale that it's pK Ratio was too low. Getting the USAF to throw-away a missile they developed for themselves in favor of a weapon developed by and for the US Navy is like pulling teeth, but they replaced the Falcon with the AIM-9 Sidewinder on every aircraft that could be converted to use it.

The total number of confirmed kills by the Sparrow in 1965-68 that could be verified by the study was 20, versus 24 by the Sidewinder, 4 by the Falcon, and 34 by gunfire.

This is from an internal USAF study, which was peer-reviewed and published by that service. An 8.9% pK Ratio is thus the official figure of the USAF itself.

The raison d'etre of the Sparrow is BVR combat, and a published in 2005 by the Air War College reveals that of 632 Sparrow launches achieved by the US military in Vietnam from 1965-69 and 1971-73, as well as by the IDF in the Yom Kippur War and the Battle of the Bekaa Valley, only 4 resulted in a kill at BVR range (out of 61 launches);
http://pogoarchives.org/labyrinth/11/09.pdf

Moreover, those 632 Sparrow launches resulted in a combined total of only 73 kills. That's only an 11.6% pK Ratio, and within the BVR regime alone it plummets to 6.6%.

That's another peer-reviewed and published by the USAF itself, BTW.


"5. And SIDEWINDER the previous benchmark before AMRAAM has a PK in combat of 47-59 % ALL ITERATIONS in wars that stretch down through sixty years."
See the previous comment.


"6. Patriot and Standard ALL ITERATIONS in combat  is DEADLY at ~ 80%.+ "
I've already presented evidence that proves that it isn't. MIT, the GAO, and Congress have all found that only 4 kills were probable in Operation Desert Storm, and none were confirmed --- contrary to the prior claimed "40 of 41" parroted by George Bush. My evidence not only proves this, but also that the US military ultimately redacted those claims. These guys aren't just the final authority on the matter --- they're the ONLY authority. You can deny any or all of these facts all you want, but you can't disprove them.

"BT may make up all the BEE-ESS he claims about missiles or cite irrelevancies to this topic all he wants, but now he stumbles into MY AREA of knowledge."
The information in this post shows how much you know.

You keep saying MIM-104 was a "Failure" at what..SAM or ATBMS?  And your compartors, they have killed...HOW MANY LIVE TARGETS?