The Patriot Scud Duels

Columnist Col (Retd) EAS BOKHARI examines the performance of the US air defence missiles against incoming surface-to-surface missiles.

From technical point of view the ‘Patriot’ Air Defence System is an important topic needing some more space and discussion. In fact other than the Israeli ‘Arrow’, about which is known but little more is available about ‘Patriot’. I had the good fortune of knowing one Dr Warren Donneley, a specialist in energy matters in the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and when I contacted him after the Gulf War 1991 about the performance of the ‘Patriot’ against Scud, he referred my request to Stevens A Hildreth, specialist in National Defence who has co-authored with Paul C Zinmeister an appropriate CRS Report for the Congress (Revised June 18, 1991). Some of the more important details provided in this report regarding the ‘Patriot’ system may be found in the paragraphs that follow:

The US Army developed the ‘Patriot’ missile system to defend against high performance aircraft. In mid-to-late 1980s the Army developed a modified version (‘Patriot’ ATM) to defend against tactical missiles including short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and air-to-surface missiles. PAC-I mods involved software changes and PAC-2, hardware changes (new fuse and larger fragments for the warhead). The Patriot was used during the Gulf War in early 1991 to defend cities and sites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Patriot’s success against Iraqi Scuds spawned conflicting claims who supported ‘Patriots’ and who didn’t, and the legislative history of Patriot ATM is not that simple. The ‘Patriot’ ATM has always been on the Army programme and has proved that BMD (Ballistic Missile Defence) can work although ‘Patriot’ has no connection with the famous SDI. It also sharpened Congress’s interest in the TBMD (Theatre Ballistic Missile Systems) being considered currently.

The ‘Patriot’ is an Army surface- to-air, mobile air defence missile system. It has been evolved since the mid-1960s to defend against medium to high altitude aircraft threat and cruise missiles, as well as more recently against short-range ballistic missiles. The system is called Patriot PAC-I and Patriot PAC-2 (Patriot Anti-Tactical Missile Capability.)

Raytheon Company, Lexington, MA designs and produces the ‘Patriot’. Martin Marietta, Orlando, FL, is the principal subcontractor, assembling the missile for Raytheon from components produced by other subcontractors. A ‘Patriot’ fire unit is a configuration of the following parts:

• 8 missile launchers (typically), each of which has 4 missiles (factory sealed in canisters), and 4 reload missiles, for each launcher, for a total of 64 missiles.

• A ground-based phased array radar for surveillance, target detection, tracking and target engagement;

• An Engagement Control Station, manned by Army personnel to provide either manual or automated command and control of the system; and,

• Communications equipment and an electrical power generator.

The system typically operates as a battalion, with each battalion of six fire units (or batteries), which operate together and share target information. Each fire unit can by itself defend area upto 50 square miles. A battalion operates, like normal artillery under the control of a FDC (Fire Distribution Centre).

The largest subcontractors included such names as Morton Thiokol Inc; Oshkosh Truck Corps, Allied Bendix Aerospace, Hewlett Packard Co and Kaiser Aerospace Electronics. Siemens AG is the principal German Contractor, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan is a licensed producer of the missile.

Notionally, see diagramme the Patriot intercepts an attacking (hostile) missile in the manner as shown in the diagramme. The Phased Array radar sees the hostile missile and tracks it. The Computer system sets priorities for ‘Patriot’ intercepts during the latter part of the attacking missile’s flight. News accounts of the Persian Gulf War, 1991 indicate that US early warning satellites and possibly early warning aircraft alerted ‘Patriot’ fire units of a possible Iraqi Scud attack. The ‘Patriot’ System cannot track and target the incoming missile, until it comes within the system’s radar line of sight about 100 miles out. The ground computers update the ‘Patriot’ missile’s guidance towards the end of the flight. The Patriot’s Proximity fuse explodes when an attacking missile comes in close to the ‘Patriot’ missile, resulting in damage or destruction of the intended target.

I suppose the ultimate evaluation of the performance of ‘Patriot’ system against Iraqi Scuds during the Gulf War, 1991 has yet to be done. Although efforts have been made in this direction, there appears to be a real conflict between the sales i.e. promotional aspects of the ‘Patriot’, and its real efficacy. Some of the more pertinent points are discussed here. Two major conclusions can be reached without much fuss:

• First, during the war, while Israel, Saudi Arabia and US forces were under attack by Iraqi Scuds, there was widespread enthusiasm over ‘Patriot’s tactical and strategical successes and,

• Second, after the war, there has been greater circumspection over Patriot’s tactical successes.

A brief analysis of the above points will be found in the paragraphs that follow. There has been some searching inquiries but their proceedings are a bit too lengthy for a short presentation like this.

The Iraqis reportedly launched some 85 Scuds towards military and civilian targets in Saudi Arabia and Israel. ‘Patriot’ missiles deployed to defend these targets intercepted 45 of the 47 Scuds they engaged. One Scud successfully penetrated Patriot defences, hitting a US military barrack in Dhahran and killed 28 US service personnel. 13 were fired at Israel before Patriot fire units were in place, and ready for operation. The remaining were not attacked by Patriots because they were heading towards open unpopulated or undefended areas.

On the whole it appeared that ‘Patriot’ had served to “save numerous lives. Although the Iraqi missile attacks were considered ‘militarily ineffective ‘by the senior US Military command, the potential for large civilian casualties was great... In addition, ‘Patriot’ seemed to contribute significantly to keeping Israel out of the war and keeping the Allied coalition together....”

With the end of the war, more facts have filtered and the story of Patriot’s tactical success has become very complicated, though there has been virtually no debate over Patriot’s successful strategic contribution in keeping Israel out of war.

It is being claimed and reported that while 89 per cent of Iraqi Scuds directed against Saudi Arabia were intercepted, only 44 per cent of the warheads were intercepted in Israel. See Rep. Aspin, Les Understanding Technology on the Battlefield: Lessons of Desert Storm for a defence that works. Speech before the American Institute of Aeronautics. May 1, 1992 p-2.

US Congress in addition has heard testimony that the use of ‘Patriots’ to intercept Scuds coming into Israel resulted in more damage than would have occurred from the Scuds alone, See Aspin p-I (above para.)

Apparently there are several reasons for poor performance of Patriots in Israel. Although the decision to transfer two ‘Patriot’ fire units had been taken by the end of September 1990, these units were not in place until after Iraq had fired II Scuds into Israel. See ‘Washington Post’ Jan 25, 1991 p A29. Apparently the delay was due to Israeli insistence that these units be manned by Israeli military personnel, despite the US offers to provide American military support in the interim period while Israeli crew were trained.

And then again, Israel apparently decided it wanted fewer Patriot fire units than was deemed necessary by some US analysts prior to the war. Surely the Israeli crew were definitely undertrained on the new equipment to reap its full tactical benefits. Yet another aspect is that only a limited number of PAC-2 missiles were available, and the two fire units could only cover limited area.

It is also pertinent to note that the Israelis adopted the manual operation rather than the automatic mode. And “in some cases, delays from firing manually may have caused a few Patriot missiles to intercept Scuds close to the ground or to follow Scuds into the ground, perhaps increasing the level of damage. In other cases, Israeli operators used the manual override to attack Scuds headed towards areas beyond the Patriots zone of high kill probability.”

It is also brought out that the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) criteria for a successful intercept is somewhat different than the US and Saudi criteria. And also when the Scuds were fired towards dense population areas, as was the case in Israel, the debris from ‘Patriot’ intercept may have also caused real damage.

So here we are, in one sense the missile defence could possibly work and on the other hand the analysis indicates that the missile defences may well leak.

The arithmetic of Iraqi ballistic missiles i.e. the Scud-Bs and their Iraqi variants makes a somewhat enigmatic and heavy reading. The following paras bring out the relevant open press figures. As it is, since the opening up of the current US ‘Op Iraqi Freedom’, there has been reports of four Scud engagements two of which have been reported neutralized by US Patriot, anti-missile missiles, and other two never hit any significant US asset in Kuwait. Where are the rest of the Iraqi Scuds requires some investigation, if at all there are some still left with Iraq for use.

Scud is a somewhat older missile and it had entered Soviet service in 1950, and its variant known as Scud-B was purchased by Iraq from the USSR and subsequently from Libya and North Korea. It is being claimed that even now North Korea is in the business of modifying Scuds, and producing their ‘No, Dong’ missile. Some more of these missiles (Scuds) may have been produced by Iraq itself by reverse engineering and through other dubious means.

According to ‘Survival May/June 1991’ (The Gulf War - Special) “Iraq modified the Scuds by increasing the size of its fuel tanks reducing the warhead to 500 pounds of high explosives (almost half of original), and extending its range to approximately 400 miles (650 Km.) As a result of its lengthy operational life and its use by Iraq in the war against Iran, the capabilities of Scud missiles were well known to the Allies. Nevertheless, three Allied miscalculations were to cause problems: about the numbers possessed by Iraq; the difficulties in locating and eliminating their launchers (TEL); and their political and psychological impact.”

According to the prestigious Military Ballanc IISS, London 1995/96, “A total of 819 missiles were delivered of which 300 were modified to the ‘Al-Hussein’ variant with a 600 Km range compared to the range of 280 Km of the basic Scud, and ten were modified to the ‘Al-Abbas’ (or Al-Hiajara) variant with a range of 900 Km. All 819 missiles have been accounted for to the UN Special Committee (UNSCOM) and all are considered to have been destroyed.”

CRS, The Library of Congress Code No IB-92117 Updated December 10, 2002 while discussing the Iraqi Scuds/Scud variants says “... UN Security Council Resolution 687 requires the destruction of all Iraqi Ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 Km. UNSCOM accounted for 817 of 819 Soviet-supplied Scud missiles, 130 of which survived the Gulf War as well as all 14 declared mobile launchers and 60 fixed launch pads. US analysts believe Iraq might be concealing as many as 12 Scud-like missiles....”

It was reported in December 1995 by Jordan that 115 Russian- made guidance components for missiles bound for Iraq were seized, whence UNSCOM said that Iraq had procured some missile since 1991 which is a violation of sanctions. That month UNSCOM retrieved prohibited missile guidance gyroscope suitable for a 2000-mile range missile, from Iraq’s Tigris River, apparently procured from Russia. UNSCOM had evidence that after the Gulf War, Iraq conducted secret flight tests and research on missiles of prohibited ranges of the ‘Ababil’ and ‘Samoud’ programmes.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, brochure ‘Iraq – What Next’ of January 2003 lists the Iraqi missile capabilities as below:

• Discrepancies in Baghdad’s declaration suggest that Iraq retains several Scud-variant shortrange ballistic missiles. British intelligence sources believe that Iraq has retained upto 20 ‘Al-Hussein’ missiles from the Gulf War. See British Government, ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of British Government, September 2002’, page 27.

• Iraqi facilities may have expanded since 1998 for the purpose of developing of longer-range missiles than are permitted by the UN. There is a considerable concern about a production plant for ammonium perchlorate (an ingredient in rocket fuel) and other research development and testing facilities conducive to the production of long-range missiles.

• Iraq has disclosed manufacturing new energetic fuels suited only to a class of missile to which it does not admit. (See State Dept fact sheet at www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/20002/16118.htm.)

• In his recent presentation to the Security Council UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Hans Blix reported that Iraq in fact declared to UNSCOM that its missiles exceeded the mandated 150-Km range by a maximum of 33 Km in 13 flight tests.

With this rather short calculus of missiles it is easy to assume that this time Saddam may not be in a position to launch Scuds duly modified to Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as he did on the Day 2 of the Gulf War 1991. He had fired a total of 88, with 42 at Israel, 43 at KSA and three at Bahrain. The damage which these Scuds caused and how these were negated has been narrated with great relish by HRH, Gen Khaled bin Sultan in his scintillating book ‘Desert Warrior’ which is presented in the paragraphs that follow:

The General says (about Gulf War 1991) that of all the weapons in Saddam’s arsenal, the only one to give the Coalition a headache was the Scud, an inaccurate (perhaps wayward), Soviet-built SSM (Surface-to-Surface Missile). It was ironical that the Coalition’s high-tech wizardry was unable fully to suppress this old-fashioned weapon. The Iraqi versions of the Scud with stretched ranges and a smaller payload had a CEP (Circular Error Probability) of over 3000 yards. It was more of a terror weapon and not a precision military tool.

To counter Scud, the Coalition had Raytheon’s ‘Patriot’ which was readied somewhat late and reached the Kingdom sometime between August and December 1990. Saddam had used some 200 Scuds against Iran and Iran too had hit back with the same weapon but with standard Scud range. Earlier on the Egyptians had some Scuds only to add a footnote to the military history and these were fired five minutes after the ceasefire by Sadat in the Deversior area.

The General has thought that the ‘Scud Hunt’ operations were rightly considered as wasteful by Gen Horner the US Air Commander who thought Scuds as mere nuisance. Some 25 to 30 per cent air effort was devoted to ‘great Scud hunt’. which disrupted Horner’s strategic air missions. The General remarks “Thus a handful of primitive Scuds, more of an irritant than a significant threat, managed to precipitate a political and military crisis and caused considerable tension between Washington and American field commanders on the ground.”

As far as dealing with the Scuds in flight, the US had arranged for twenty-one US Patriot batteries comprising no less than 132 launchers deployed at key sites in the Kingdom.

All the Scuds were fired at night, and many a Saudi rather eagerly watched the duels between the Scuds and the Patriots. In Riyadh the site was the Hyatt Regency Hotel which was the home of the international press and many a pressman and cameraman camped out at night on the flat roof of the hotel. These duels were really colourful. The Patriot had been developed as an anti-aircraft defence system against fast hostile aircraft, and anti-ballistic missile capability was later added to the Patriot PAC-2 missiles.

There is much controversy, and even there had been an official US inquest about the real efficacy of Patriots in the Gulf War, 1991, but I suppose for pure promotional reasons much more potency than it really deserves has been attributed to the missile. The Israeli Chief of Staff during the Gulf War 1991 thought that Patriot’s success was ‘a myth’. Surprisingly Patriot in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proved comparatively more lethal than the batteries deployed in Israel.

Of course there were casualties due to Scud attacks and it was towards the end of the war on 25 February 1991 that a Scud landed on US barracks in Dhahran killing 28 persons and wounding 100 more. The 26 men and 2 women were American reserve logisticians called up to staff water purification units. They had arrived in the Kingdom just a week earlier. “By a grisly coincidence, all 28 of the dead were from a small town in Pennsylvania, very near to Chareroi, home town of General Pagonis, the US logistic chief.

Finally to sum up just as the Scud was a weapon of terror, so the Patriot proved to be a weapon of comfort.

Patriot, by all accounts had a poor showing in both the Gulf Wars. A very readable and comprehensive report on the performance of the anti-missile in Gulf War I is contained in “Evaluation of US Army Assessment of Patriot Anti-Tactical Missile Effectiveness In War Against Iraq” prepared by Steven A. Hildreth, Specialist in National Defence, Foreign Affairs and National Defence Division Congressional Research Service. This work was done by the author for the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security hearing on 07 April 1992.

The report is quite extensive and covers the ‘kills’ due to engagements by Patriot in three modes as ‘warhead kills’, ‘mission kills’ and lastly’ ‘no kills’, the last signifying a high order explosion on the ground, which might have caused significant damage. The report also tacitly covers system performance such as the failure of the system when the operators wanted it to perform, launching of automatically against fake targets, ‘why Patriot missiles were launched and plunged into ground soon thereafter, and why software adjustments were needed throughout the war.’

The report is unclassified and deals with Army’s approach which is classified, and then again it is not easy to get timely and accurate information during the heat of battle and still more difficult to coordinate, disseminate and record data while under fire in battle. Some of the data and sources used in the investigation are indicated in the inset.

“Because the Army’s assessment on Patriot’s effectiveness relies heavily on human after-action reports, questions can be asked concerning how much confidence should be placed in these type of reports and on judgements based heavily on them. As one senior US Military official observed during relevant wartime briefings: ‘a lot of things are happening very quickly, and it’s almost impossible... for observers just to stand there and know what is what’”.

There appears to be a very considerable confusion about the reliance which can be placed on the data placed before the Committee which itself had been obtained under war-like conditions and the report makes a reference to this in the following words. “... Given the many questions raised over how much confidence should be placed in most of the data sources, one could ask whether judgements made from that data could or should be precise... The point may be the most important one to consider in evaluating the Army’s assessments. Some might consider the Army’s scoring system of warhead kills, no kill, or mission kill, procrustean. This approach leads only to black or white judgements. There is no room for uncertainty in individual or collective scoring of Patriot-Scud engagements. The Army’s scoring system, therefore, raises questions over how much confidence should be placed in its assessment.”

It appears that the manufacturers of the Patriot were not there in the foregoing inquest. All the same they have made their point and some of their response to various criticisms are listed as below:

Critic’s claim

The Patriots’ success rate in Saudi Arabia and Israel cannot be verified, and in the case of Israel may not have been any successful Patriot-Scud engagements.

Fact

The US Army and the Government of Israel have issued statistics on the success rates of the Patriot missile systems in the Gulf War. The exact figures remain classified.

US Army Brigadier Gen Robert A Drolet has stated, “In Saudi Arabia, 80 per cent of the TBMs within its coverage zone (and) in Israel... Patriot successfully engaged over 50 per cent of the TBMs in the coverage zone... In combat Patriot did what the Army designed and developed it to do. Actual performance exceeded the Army’s expectations...” US Secretary of Defence Richard Cheney stated in a report to Congress in July 1991 “... Preliminary indications are that Patriot successfully intercepted a majority of Scud missiles that were in the engagement envelope.”

On 11 December 1991, Israeli Air Force Brig Gen Ytzhak Biran in an interview spoke of the successes of the Patriot in Israel. Simply stated, the difference of successes of engagements in two countries is that crew that manned the system in the two countries enjoyed vastly different degrees of preparation prior to engaging their first TBMs (Tactical Ballistic Missile). Also there was difference in the tactical deployment and operational doctrine of the system in the two countries.

Claim-2

There were conflicts between Ratheon and the US Army over Patriot growth programme.

Fact

By and large the Patriot had far exceeded the Army’s technical expectations. All the same, some lessons were learnt and as a result the Patriot Government/industry team initiated and funded furtherance of programmes in the domain of range and altitude extension at which the targets are intercepted and destroyed.

Claim-3

Damage on the ground to apartment buildings and dwellings in Israel was heavy and appears to have increased after Patriot’s deployment in that country.

Fact

These questionable reports are largely based on local news media presentations. These are in general conflicting and as per Israeli Health Minister Ehud Ulmert vast majority of reported damage (85 per cent) to apartments was superficial with an average value of $600 per apartment. Had the Scud landed on the ground the damage would have been much greater and devastating.

Claim-4

Israeli authorities, critical of Patriot’s performance, have been using films of 12 Patriot-Scud engagements to brief US authorities in Washington DC.

Fact

There is no doubt about the efficacy of the Patriots in Israel. Films unfortunately are not a precise analytical tool. The critics should ask for the tapes which tell the true story. And then the Israel has purchased a third Patriot fire unit and asked for a fourth one too. These actions could not have come from a country not satisfied with the system any way.

Claim-5

The US Army and Ratheon are engaged in a deliberate disinformation campaign designed to deceive the American public and future foreign Patriot customers about the performance of the system in combat.

Fact

Nothing could be further from truth and the charge does a great disservice to the integrity of both organizations and their personnel.

Claim-6

Numerous errors existed in the Patriot system’s software and untested software changes were rushed into combat to correct these problems when they were discovered.

Fact

A fundamental and significant advantage of the Patriot system is the flexibility of its computer software in adapting to unexpected changes in threat characteristics. In fact, the US Army and the Ratheon experts studied each and every Patriot-Scud engagement and were able to establish the requirements, and deployed two software updates in a rather short war. This adaptability showed the system strength and not any kind of weakness.

Claim-7

The Scud was a crude missile, not difficult to deal with and therefore not a significant threat.

Fact

Term crude has been often used by the press to describe Scud, and the inference that ‘crude’ equated with easy to engage is a popular but erroneous misconception. The Iraqis had doctored the basic Soviet Scuds to achieve additional range and consequently the missile broke up upon reentry into the atmosphere and what resulted was a high-speed manoeuvring RV accompanied by decoys.

It was only crude in the sense that these characteristics were not obtained by original design and the resulting accuracy was poor. In all other respects, it was a very difficult target whose behaviour had not been anticipated and which presented significant challenges for the crew that operated the Patriot systems.

Claim-8

The difficulties which Patriot encountered against the behaviour of Iraqi Scud variant target show clearly that active ATBM defences can easily be overcome. It, therefore, follows that money spent on active ATBM defence is very likely wasted.

Fact

“Tactical ballistic missiles were primarily a terrorist weapon in Desert Storm. It is reasonable to predict that their use will become more widespread as they proliferate geographically and they will become increasingly important militarily as they evolve technically.

An active defence against such threats remains the best defence. In several instances, where no such defence was available over the past several years, casualties and destruction was enormous. For example in the “war of cities” (Iraq- Iran War) Iranian authorities estimated that over 1,150 people were killed and over 4,000 wounded. In Afghanistan, an attack on a single Afghan market by three Scud missiles on a single day killed over 300 people and injured hundreds more. Nothing of that scale, or remotely approaching it, happened in either Saudi Arabia or Israel during Desert Storm because Patriot worked.”

And finally the duel between Scud and the Patriot may be considered the traditional battle between a weapon and its antidote. In the recent times the US President Reagan thought, perhaps wishfully, that whatever was technically thinkable was also physically obtainable. At the height of cold war period, he put up a challenge to the US technical resources and scientific community to ‘zap’ the Soviet missile before these could reach the American homeland. He has in his mind a gargantuan scheme of things which was not supported by the scientist community and which envisaged a massive space platform from where laser attack could be conducted on the hostile missiles to incinerate them. This gargantuan architecture, popularly known as SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative) never came into being as it was scientifically flawed.

Patriot and some other variants of anti-missile missiles are in fact a ‘sensible defence initiative’ and some more experimentation will be needed before they can be declared as a foolproof weapon against missiles. But by then the tactical ballistic missiles would have further improved. So the race goes on.

Appendix 1:

Sources used by Army

Hard or Physical Evidence

• SRBM Launch Data (U). US Space COMMAND (USSPACECMD DEFSMAC). Feb. 27, 1991.

• SRBM Launch Activity (U). US Army Missile and Space Intelligence Centre Report. May 16, 1991.

• Track Amplification Tabular Data From Many Saudi Arabian and Some Israeli Target Track Files (U).

• Experiment 2 Display Copies From Riyadh (U). Jan. 21, 1991.

• Mission Recording Tapes From Tel Aviv of 9, 11, and 19, February 1991 (U).

• VHS Videos (U): Israel Intercepts Jan. 22, 25, 26, Feb. 2, 9, 11, 12, 19, 1991; IR Camera Coverage for Feb. 11, 12, 19, 1991; ECS Situation Displays for IDF-1 and IDF-2; and Dharan, Jan. 21, 1991 (U).

• Israeli Impact Photos (U). Feb. 6, 1992.

• Photos-Scud Parts/Destroyed Warhead (U).

• Photos of Ground Damage in Saudi Arabia (U).

Human after-action reports & analysis

• PATRIOT Effectiveness in Intercepting and Destroying Scud Variant Missiles in Southwest Asia (U). Ballistic Research Laboratory. Draft Final Report. Feb.1, 1991.

• Scud Summary (U). US Army TRADOC System Manager (TSM) HIMAD (High & Medium Altitude Air Defence) Data Sheets. Apr. 18, 1991.

• Israeli Defence Force (IDF) Performance Data Sheets/Plots, “Desert Storm Israeli Results (U)” Dec.31,1991.

• Joint US Army and Israeli Defence Force (IDF) Technical Assessment of Patriot Performance (U). Mar. 8, 1991.

• Unit Engagement Reports (U).

• Public Newspaper Articles (U).