The Patriot system was originally designed to operate in Europe against Soviet medium- to high-altitude aircraft and cruise missiles traveling at speeds up to a

The Patriot system was originally designed to operate in Europe against Soviet medium- to high-altitude aircraft and cruise missiles traveling at speeds up to about MACH 2 (1500 mph). To avoid detection it was designed to be mobile and operate for only a few hours at one location. http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat6/145960.pdf http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat6/145960.pdf Page 2 dug into reference 48 from Wikipedia which referenced this article which I did a search on google.