Thanks!
To be honest, no. They’re not what Patriot was designed to do.
mks57: The first actually working air-to-air missile was the Fairley Fireflash. The first American missile was the Falcon.
That’s the (Mobile) Tactical High Energy Laser, THEL, but it isn’t really moving forward as quickly as some would expect.
Another option for dealing with the rockets could be the C-RAM, which is little more than a Phalanx Close-In Weapons System teamed with a counter-battery radar. There are news reports that Israel is looking at that system, but has some reservations about its effectiveness.
Both the proponents and critics were correct but comparing apples and oranges (damn lying statistics). The missiles “intercepted” the Scuds at a near perfect level. Fuze functioning indicated near enough passage to the target. “Kills” were abysmal however - and this may be the governing factor to your opinion.
Problems with the early PATRIOT in destroying missile warheads:
Originally designed to shoot down aircraft - It’s actually the radar that’s the amazing component. It can track and discern aircraft/missile attributes at astounding distances in detail never attained before except in large fixed installations.
Warhead optimized for aircraft. The early PATRIOT warhead is a near spherical design of thousands of steel cubes “glued” together in an epoxy resin matrix that surrounds the explosive charge. The cubes were in layers and quite small - aircraft skins are not real robust except for portions of ground attack aircraft like the A-10.
Fuze sensors were designed to “look” out more to the side rather than ahead of the missile.
The warhead initiation train (electric bridgewire, mix of primary explosives, lead (as in “leader”), charges, booster, main charge were not designed with missile intercept in mind.
The closing (and separation speeds) were multiple Mach faster with the incoming missiles than with aircraft.
What happened at intercept?
It may have become a debris cloud as the Scud broke up on reentry. The target may have become a fuel tank rather than the warhead. To an above post - the missiles were never manually steered, software was adjusted to target the faster falling, more predictable flight of the warhead.
The closing speed was the key problem. As the PATRIOT passed the Scud, the fuze sensors triggered the warhead and we had an intercept. Except, the detonation would occur at the tail of the Scud or even after it had passed the PATRIOT. The rate of detonation of the explosive and the steel cubes (which initially travel at the speed of the shock wave) were slower than the relative speed of the Scud going the other direction. PATRIOT at speed Mach X plus Scud going at Mach Y.
The Scud might break up from the tail being shattered or the entire missile would get pushed off course some. A new debris cloud for the next PATRIOT. Usually launched in pairs by the fire direction software.
Even if detonation was close enough to the Scud warhead, the steel cubes did not have enough energy to disrupt and destroy it. The Scud warhead was robust enough to survive atmospheric reentry.
Fixes to adapt the PATRIOT to missile interceptor.
Fuze sensors were modified to “look forward” - anticipate the target - triggering the warhead quicker.
The firing train was modified to react quicker. The electronics portion was already acting at the close to the speed of light. The chemical portion was shortened and material modified to respond quicker. Moving from .05 sec delay to .025 sec would be a big deal.
The future Scuds would be flying into the explosion rather than sailing past it.
The next generation warheads had much larger tungsten carbide steel cubes to insure destruction of the target if impacted.
Software continually evolved to refine intercept points - direct impact was fine. Terminal guidance and control functions were “tightened up”.
Latest generation PATRIOTS and family relations destroy targets through kinetic energy impacts. Initial PATRIOTs were 1960s technology - a lot has changed.
Lots of lessons learned from GW I and II. Some very hard such as the fratricide incidents.
There are more stories on phantom intercepts, trajectories, and the like.
Wouldn’t you need a whole bunch of Phalanx units to make the effort worthwhile? (Emplacements?)
Not to mention the rain of lead (or whatever material your bullets were made of) downrange! The CIWS is designed to essentially hurl enough material into the path of the incoming projectile to destroy it.
The C-RAM uses frangible ammunition that is supposed to disintegrate in flight.
And one of the issues with C-RAM is the question of how many are needed to cover a given amount of terrain. However, they are not terribly expensive systems, as far as defense systems go.
Sure, but while putting a couple on a ship may be cheap, putting a few hundred in a neighborhood is less so.
Israelis developed/are developing system called Iron Dome designed specifically to intercept short range rockets, but it probably won’t be fielded before 2010. Now - if to believe Rafael specs - that would be right tool for that job.
This is a big part of the problem - the qassams have a range of 10-15km max; shooting them down over populated areas isn’t helpful, so you’d need to get them within the first mile or two of launch i.e. within 10 seconds, if that much.
Another problem puppygod touched on is cost - it’d be missiles costing at least several hundred thousand dollars each to take out what amounts to little more than a street-pole loaded with some home-made explosive. The qassams have very little effective damage radius (I think standing 30m away from one landing would involve soiled trousers, but it’d be far enough to escape injury), it’s misleadingly generous to even call them missiles.
Quite. They have killed 20 people in total.
Ever.
They are glorified bottle rockets whose impact comes from the constant debilitating stress and terror they inflict on people always having to take shelter rather than the actual physical threat.