Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
Are you saying that during the gulf war the Patriot missiles in Israel and Saudi Arabia shot down less than three SCUDS? Otherwise I was not overestimating.
|
We may have shot down 3. It's equally likely that we shot down zero.
A 10 month investigation by the House Government Operations subcommittee on Legislation and National Security concluded that there was little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scuds. Testimony before the House Committee on Government Operations by Professor Theodore Postol (a professor of Science, technology and National Security Policy at M.I.T.) On April 7, 1992 and reports written by professor Postol raised serious doubts about the Patriot's performance. After examining video evidence of the Patriot's performance in Israel during the Gulf War and conducting his own tests, professor Postol claimed that the Patriot had a very low success rate.
"The results of these studies are disturbing. They suggest that the Patriot's intercept rate during the Gulf War was very low. The evidence from these preliminary studies indicates that Patriot's intercept rate could be much lower than ten percent, possibly even zero." (Statement of Theodore A. Postol before the U.S. House Of Representatives Committee on Government Operations, April 7, 1992)
http://www.cdi.org/issues/bmd/Patriot.html
(success rates of 40% - 60% have been claimed by the military and our good friends at Raytheon)
From the official House Report on the performance of the Patriot Missile in the 1st Gulf War:
"The Army assessment did not contain conclusive proof that any Patriot missile had destroyed a Scud warhead."
http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/n...er.pdf#search='patriot%20missile%20scud'
I don't think anybody is against the concept of missile defense. The "liberals" who oppose pouring money into SDI are actually conservative: they're trying to eliminate huge goverment spending on things that don't work. Show us a reasonable budget with realistic estimates of what we get for our money. Reagan has nothing to do with it.
