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Kevin Mooney at CNSNews has written an informative story about missile defense in the present war in Iraq.
The war in the Gulf has proved a training ground, so to speak, for the U.S. Army’s Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) surface-to-air guided missile defense system. Deployed in Kuwait at the start of the war to defend against Scud attacks, PAC-3 successfully intercepted and destroyed Scud missiles, says the Missile Defense Agency.
There have been problems with the technology, however. CNSNews reports that PAC-3 was involved in “friendly fire” incidents. A British warplane was shot down on March 23, 2003, and in April 2004, a Patriot battery shot down a U.S. F/A-18 Hornet.
An excerpt of the article:
“Only two of the successful intercepts during Operation Iraqi Freedom involved PAC-3s, while the other seven were PAC-2s. Looking ahead to the near future, the U.S. military plans to more emphasis on PAC-3s, especially for ground-based systems, Ellison noted.
‘You have to remember that in the 1990s, missile defense was still a science project,’ he observed. ‘We were still in the research and development stage. This changed after withdrawing from the ABM Treaty [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972] and we had to a do a lot of adapting with what was currently in inventory.’”
The article includes a brief mention of the threat of Islam and successful tests of other anti-missile technology. Read the whole article.
(Photo credit: Raytheon)
