Another 1992 investigation done by the General Accounting Office found that only 9 percent of the Patriot-Scud engagements "are supported by the strongest evidence that an engagement resulted in a warhead kill." (The GAO defined "the strongest evidence" as instances in which Scud debris or radar data indicated that a Scud was destroyed or disabled after a Patriot detonated near it.) Except in 9 percent of the cases, the GAO report said the Army could prove only that "the Patriots came close to the Scuds, not that they destroyed them."
Both reports, as well as studies by analysts (in particular MIT scientists George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol) concluded that Gulf War television pictures showing Patriots chasing Scuds were misleading. The television images didn't fully reflect that a number of the Patriots were just wounding Scuds or pushing them off course; big chunks of both missiles then fell to the ground. In Israel, the amount of damages and casualties increased after the Patriots were deployed there.
The Patriot missile which was designed to shoot down airplanes and not missiles was used against the SCUDs as they were coming in and we were all treated on television to the sight of the big explosion in the sky but then we were little surprised to see another explosion on the ground shortly thereafter and figured what's going on? Well, the truth of the matter is that the Patriot was pretty much doing its job as the government claimed, but the job wasn't quite proper. The Patriot missiles were going after the hottest part of the incoming SCUD, which was the tail, and would blow up in proximity to the tail and blow up that part of the SCUD, but the payload which was the warhead was on the front of the SCUD. And that was unaffected and it would simply tumble to the earth and freefall and explode on the ground. So in a sense yes, they were getting the SCUDs, but by the same token they weren't getting the warhead on the SCUD, which was doing... doing the damage.
The Israelis believed that the Americans didn't fully understand the deficiencies of the Patriot. That the Americans were being willfully blind about it. And there were bitter complaints. Moshe Arens came to Washington in February and had a meeting with Bush and his senior advisors in which he said, the Patriot is not working... We believe that only 20 percent of the SCUDs that are attacked with the Patriot are in fact, destroyed. Cheney at the same meeting spoke up and said, there is a fundamental disagreement over how effective the Patriots are. Nevertheless, the Israelis recognized that a belief that the Patriot was effective was almost as important as the effectiveness of the missile itself. It helped to calm the Israeli population. It helped to prevent the Israeli government, the Shamir government from coming under pressure to actively leap into the war. It was a very effective propaganda tool. And whenever suggestions were made within the Israeli government that the truth about the Patriot as seen by the Israelis be made public other voices prevailed saying, why would we tell Sadam that the Patriot is not working when in fact it's in our best interest to let him believe that it's infallible.
I guess that is one of the reasons the Israelis developed the Arrow anti-missile missile which is said to perform much better than the Patriot. Although i still think Patriots protect the Arrow crews (i.e the Patriots protect the Arrows and the Arrows protect the country or something like that).
ROTFLMAO! and shaking my head in disbelief.
Gimme a break here gentlemen. What the hay does this idiot writer think should happen? Both missiles totally vaporize? Both missiles continue on into outer space orbit!? Of course the damn things fell to the ground. Things you toss into the air generally do. The question is, did you disrupt a) the flight path and/or b) the warhead enough that the target was less/unaffected.
You can't really ask for much more, and if your enemy is just lobbing the things at a large populated area, yes, there are going to be some casualties.
What idiocy.