To amplify on the other replies you already have seen, the Patriot 1 was an anti AIRCRAFT missile retasked as a Scud killer. To destroy aircraft it merely had to explode in proximity and allow the flak to strike and disable the fragile aircraft.
Applied to Scuds this meant in most cases the flak striking the expended booster, a useless exercise as the warhead would continue to earth.
In a news report of an attack on an Israeli civilian neighborhood I noticed the “intercepted” Scud booster largely intact, laying on its side perforated as though somebody took a shotgun to it. I felt that was odd enough to note and remember but I didn’t think it through to realize the failure of the system.
The Patriot 3s used in the last war don’t use flak, but instead the warhead targets the incoming missile for a direct hit, the “bullet hitting a bullet” that SDI critics swore for a generation could never be accomplished.
From memory they intercepted and totally destroyed in flight 27 of 28 incoming Iraqi missiles. The only one that got through to civilian areas hit a beach near a Kuwaiti shopping mall spraying its entrance with fragments. Other Scuds tracking towards uninhabited areas were not fired upon.
‘Other Scuds tracking towards uninhabited areas were not fired upon’
I take it that you are using ‘SCUD’ in the generic term?Not a single SCUD was launched by the Iraqi’s in 2003. The longest range ballistic fired by the Iraqis were Al Samoud 2s. These are tiny in comparison to the SCUDs that Iraq fired back in 1991. It was a SEERSUCKER anti-ship missile that exploded near the Kuwaiti shopping mall.