Or maybe, over 22 years, missile intercept technology has improved. Witness video of Israel’s Iron Dome successfully intercepting palestinian rockets:
https://twitter.com/manniefabian/status/1656363889666191375
Not only are rockets are not missiles, but why are you bringing up the Iron Dome when the subject of the article was the Patriot?
What was the best digital camera in 1991? How many times a second could an intercept trajectory be recalculated?
These have been some of the areas of greatest technological progress in the last 30 years. No surprise interception has gotten much easier.
The big challenge of modern war is that in 2023 if you can see something you can kill it. That forces a reevaluation of everything our armed forces does.