7 ms·

Patriot Missiles Are Made in America and Fail Everywhere

55 points by vilhelm_s 9y ago

madeuptempacct 9y ago
There is no evidence that the Patriot, or the Russian S300/S400, ever intercepted anything fast moving. For example, when the US hit a Syrian airbase defended by Russian AA, not a single relatively-slow Tomawhawk was shot down. Though one could argue that Russia held back for political reasons, but that's very weak - no one could blame Russia for self-defense. The same goes for CIWS - I don't know of a single instance of US or Russian (or otherwise) CIWS defending a ship from a missile. (With the notable exception of Phalanx, which seems to do ok against mortars).
Invictus0 9y ago
I don't know anything about this issue but am interested in learning more. Has anyone read any other reports like this about the Patriot system?
seldonnn 9y ago
This is the pac-2 missile which was fielded in 1990 and not designed to combat these kinds of missiles. PAC-3 is much more advanced and the kill vehicle much more accurate.
- holtalanm 9y ago
  came here to say this.
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  They do address this in the article. In fairness, the system deployed in Saudi Arabia — the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 or PAC-2 — is not well designed to intercept the Burkan-2 missiles that the Houthis are firing at Riyadh. The Burkan-2 flies around 600 miles and appears to have a warhead that separates from the missile itself.
  - lainga 9y ago
    Also worth noting that the MIM-104 original and PAC-2 were developed by Raytheon, and I suspect that the PAC-3 was awarded to Lockheed Martin because the PAC-2's problems were so severe.
- thomasz 9y ago
  "In fairness, the system deployed in Saudi Arabia — the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 or PAC-2 — is not well designed to intercept the Burkan-2 missiles that the Houthis are firing at Riyadh. The Burkan-2 flies around 600 miles and appears to have a warhead that separates from the missile itself." Seriously? The system can't intercept threads it wasn't designed to? That's the article?
  - Jtsummers 9y ago
    It wasn't designed to, but the system keeps being deployed to defend against these threats. Leads to a question: What's the point of continuing to deploy something that, by all (unclassified) accounts, seems to have no real utility?
    - Steve44 9y ago
      > What's the point of continuing to deploy something that, by all (unclassified) accounts, seems to have no real utility? I think the point is that it is better than nothing and may well make a difference. It's not totally useless, like those fake bomb detectors which were being discussed a couple of years ago.
    - pm90 9y ago
      That's how procurement, and especially military procurement, works in most countries which have some degree of corruption. Or at least: when there isn't any good oversight by the stakeholders. Seems like the procurement of Patriot missiles was driven more by a need to "buy from the USA" than as an actual credible way to thwart actual threats. Which is incredibly surprising EVEN after knowing how this works because presumably the Houthis are using Iranian/Iran-derivatives of missile systems and Iran is supposed to be the primary geo-political rival to the Sauds. (Makes me wonder what else won't really work in an actual war). Let me say that I'm a pacifist 100%; diplomacy comes first and all that but war is really where you can't lie and all your bad decisions are right there in your face and fuck you up completely if you didn't think hard enough through these things. This particular incident reminds me of when the Pakistanis procured the latest F-6 aircrafts from the US but were unable to use them effectively in a war against India (1971) because their pilots were not sufficiently trained in how to handle the advanced aircraft systems.... oops.
- otempomores 9y ago
  Selling scrap to close allies?
ShadowFaxSam 9y ago
I don't think its any surprise Trump was falsely bragging about the success of a missile being intercepted and shot down. What is slightly more surprising is that other government agencies are also putting out this information giving the public a false sense of security.
mtgx 9y ago
Fortunately, there's a sucker born every day: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-raytheon-poland-patriot/poland-signs-4-75-billion-deal-for-u-s-patriot-missile-system-facing-russia-idUSKBN1H417S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-raytheon-poland-patriot/p...
- yread 9y ago
  FWIW Poland is getting the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE), a newer variant that entered service in 2015 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/poland-signs-4-75-billion-patriot-missile-deal-with-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/poland-si...
  - otempomores 9y ago
    A completely new statistic.. definitely superior to the old ones.
- sebcat 9y ago
  Also: http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/sweden-patriot-configuration-3-modernized-fire-units http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/sweden-patriot-configur... "The total estimated program cost is $3.2 billion" The reason for both of these deals seems to be somewhat correlated to Iskander units in Kaliningrad.
rossdavidh 9y ago
Theory: it's a bluff. You want to at least convince the enemy that their missiles are getting shot down. Trying to mislead the enemy via newsmedia is at least a century old (in some ways much older). Problem: social media, and a very fragmented internet newsmedia sector, make this less effective than before. The Houthis no doubt are aware that the Saudis are not successful.
dikkechill 9y ago
The mentioned 1991 issues with the Patriot Missile were due to an issue converting integers to floats. The [system's] prediction of where the Scud will next appear is a function of the Scud's known velocity and the time of the last radar detection. Velocity is a real number that can be expressed as a whole number and a decimal (e.g., 3750.2563 . . . miles per hour). Time is kept continuously by the system's internal clock in tenths of seconds but is expressed as an integer or whole number (e.g., 32, 33, 34 . . .). The longer the system has been running, the larger the number representing time. To predict where the Scud will next appear, both time and velocity must be expressed as real numbers. Because of the way the Patriot computer performs its calculations and the fact that its registers are only 24 bits long, the conversion of time from an integer to a real number cannot be any more precise than 24 bits. This conversion results in a loss of precision causing a less accurate time calculation. The effect of this inaccuracy on the [system's] calculation is directly proportional to the target's velocity and the length that the system has been running. Consequently, performing the conversion after the Patriot computer system has been running continuously for extended periods causes the [system's estimated Scud position] to shift away from the center of the target, making it less likely that the target will be successfully intercepted. See also http://cs.furman.edu/digitaldomain/themes/risks/risks_numeric.htm http://cs.furman.edu/digitaldomain/themes/risks/risks_numeri...
- vilhelm_s 9y ago
  There was just a single failure due to the arithmetic bug (and they patched the software the day after it happened). The general bad performance of Patriot missiles in the gulf war was because shooting down ballistic missiles is hard, not because of a discrete bug. Incidentally, although this is often described as a "floating point bug", the actual arithmetic was 24-bit fixed point. In order to convert from tenths of seconds to seconds they multiplied by 1/10 = 0.00011001100110011001100. If they had used a floating point format with a 24-bit mantissa, they could have multiplied by 2^-3 * 0.110011001100110011001100, giving 4 more bits of precision, which would probably have been enough to intercept the missile! :) Also perhaps interestingly, the problem only arose because a software upgrade had introduced a new function to do the conversion more accurately, but didn't call it everywhere. If they had used the old inaccurate conversion throughout, the errors would mostly have cancelled out. See http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html
dogma1138 9y ago
Patriot missiles did more damage than Iraqi SCUDs fired at Israel (they are technically responsible for the only Israeli casualty in the war) in 1991 which is why right after Israel went on full steam with the development the Arrow. US missile defense was always a mess.
OhDagny 9y ago
One of the main problems with missle defense is probably achieving intercept speed. Ground based means you need to fight gravity. Why not have high flying solar powered long endurance drones that can swoop down and use gravity to get speed, in addition to rocket fuel? You put the drones up there. Kind of like the smart space rock, but you don't need to put it in orbit. Or you can use balloons to keep them up there. Lasers are just stupid retreads of failed spacewars. Or maybe balloons that can spread out with nanotubes or strong wires that will slice up an incoming warhead. I've wondered about setting up such things for a cheap anti-aircraft defense for guerilla warfare. Like if you make a huge balloon-lofted array of basically dental floss. Edit: I guess these are called barrage balloons
exabrial 9y ago
PAC2 is downright dangerous to the people firing the missiles! From failing to intercept, exploding too late, software bugs, the whole system is an engineering joke.
mikhailfranco 9y ago
Maybe it's only good at friendly fire? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/2877349.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/2877349.stm Patriot: killing allies in the skies and civilians on the ground since 1990.
- gandhium 9y ago
  > Patriot: killing allies in the skies and civilians on the ground since 1990. This quote is nowhere in the article, where did you got it?
- mikhailfranco 9y ago
  Son et Lumière - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/two-failures-in-one-day-missile-defense-is-an-embaressment-it-wont-work.html http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/two-failures-in-one-day...
ummm32 9y ago
Just wanted to say, for sure there's wrong stuff everywhere (a couple of versions of failed missiles maybe), somewhere in the system, but America is by far one of the best countries in the world to have been born, and I'm not being a crazy fan or something, just stating the facts. I think many people in there just like to critizice a little too much about everything, not usually from objectivity (not knowing how actually difficult is to keep things going ok). Many would like to have half a country like the one you have there. Just saying.

55 points by vilhelm_s 9y ago

There is no evidence that the Patriot, or the Russian S300/S400, ever intercepted anything fast moving. For example, when the US hit a Syrian airbase defended by Russian AA, not a single relatively-slow Tomawhawk was shot down. Though one could argue that Russia held back for political reasons, but that's very weak - no one could blame Russia for self-defense. The same goes for CIWS - I don't know of a single instance of US or Russian (or otherwise) CIWS defending a ship from a missile. (With the notable exception of Phalanx, which seems to do ok against mortars).

Invictus0 9y ago

I don't know anything about this issue but am interested in learning more. Has anyone read any other reports like this about the Patriot system?

seldonnn 9y ago

This is the pac-2 missile which was fielded in 1990 and not designed to combat these kinds of missiles. PAC-3 is much more advanced and the kill vehicle much more accurate.

holtalanm 9y ago
came here to say this.
Jtsummers 9y ago
They do address this in the article. In fairness, the system deployed in Saudi Arabia — the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 or PAC-2 — is not well designed to intercept the Burkan-2 missiles that the Houthis are firing at Riyadh. The Burkan-2 flies around 600 miles and appears to have a warhead that separates from the missile itself.
- lainga 9y ago
  Also worth noting that the MIM-104 original and PAC-2 were developed by Raytheon, and I suspect that the PAC-3 was awarded to Lockheed Martin because the PAC-2's problems were so severe.
thomasz 9y ago
"In fairness, the system deployed in Saudi Arabia — the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 or PAC-2 — is not well designed to intercept the Burkan-2 missiles that the Houthis are firing at Riyadh. The Burkan-2 flies around 600 miles and appears to have a warhead that separates from the missile itself." Seriously? The system can't intercept threads it wasn't designed to? That's the article?
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  It wasn't designed to, but the system keeps being deployed to defend against these threats. Leads to a question: What's the point of continuing to deploy something that, by all (unclassified) accounts, seems to have no real utility?
  - Steve44 9y ago
    > What's the point of continuing to deploy something that, by all (unclassified) accounts, seems to have no real utility? I think the point is that it is better than nothing and may well make a difference. It's not totally useless, like those fake bomb detectors which were being discussed a couple of years ago.
  - pm90 9y ago
    That's how procurement, and especially military procurement, works in most countries which have some degree of corruption. Or at least: when there isn't any good oversight by the stakeholders. Seems like the procurement of Patriot missiles was driven more by a need to "buy from the USA" than as an actual credible way to thwart actual threats. Which is incredibly surprising EVEN after knowing how this works because presumably the Houthis are using Iranian/Iran-derivatives of missile systems and Iran is supposed to be the primary geo-political rival to the Sauds. (Makes me wonder what else won't really work in an actual war). Let me say that I'm a pacifist 100%; diplomacy comes first and all that but war is really where you can't lie and all your bad decisions are right there in your face and fuck you up completely if you didn't think hard enough through these things. This particular incident reminds me of when the Pakistanis procured the latest F-6 aircrafts from the US but were unable to use them effectively in a war against India (1971) because their pilots were not sufficiently trained in how to handle the advanced aircraft systems.... oops.
otempomores 9y ago
Selling scrap to close allies?

ShadowFaxSam 9y ago

I don't think its any surprise Trump was falsely bragging about the success of a missile being intercepted and shot down. What is slightly more surprising is that other government agencies are also putting out this information giving the public a false sense of security.

mtgx 9y ago

Fortunately, there's a sucker born every day: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-raytheon-poland-patriot/poland-signs-4-75-billion-deal-for-u-s-patriot-missile-system-facing-russia-idUSKBN1H417S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-raytheon-poland-patriot/p...

yread 9y ago
FWIW Poland is getting the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE), a newer variant that entered service in 2015 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/poland-signs-4-75-billion-patriot-missile-deal-with-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-28/poland-si...
- otempomores 9y ago
  A completely new statistic.. definitely superior to the old ones.
sebcat 9y ago
Also: http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/sweden-patriot-configuration-3-modernized-fire-units http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/sweden-patriot-configur... "The total estimated program cost is $3.2 billion" The reason for both of these deals seems to be somewhat correlated to Iskander units in Kaliningrad.

rossdavidh 9y ago

Theory: it's a bluff. You want to at least convince the enemy that their missiles are getting shot down. Trying to mislead the enemy via newsmedia is at least a century old (in some ways much older). Problem: social media, and a very fragmented internet newsmedia sector, make this less effective than before. The Houthis no doubt are aware that the Saudis are not successful.

dikkechill 9y ago

The mentioned 1991 issues with the Patriot Missile were due to an issue converting integers to floats. The [system's] prediction of where the Scud will next appear is a function of the Scud's known velocity and the time of the last radar detection. Velocity is a real number that can be expressed as a whole number and a decimal (e.g., 3750.2563 . . . miles per hour). Time is kept continuously by the system's internal clock in tenths of seconds but is expressed as an integer or whole number (e.g., 32, 33, 34 . . .). The longer the system has been running, the larger the number representing time. To predict where the Scud will next appear, both time and velocity must be expressed as real numbers. Because of the way the Patriot computer performs its calculations and the fact that its registers are only 24 bits long, the conversion of time from an integer to a real number cannot be any more precise than 24 bits. This conversion results in a loss of precision causing a less accurate time calculation. The effect of this inaccuracy on the [system's] calculation is directly proportional to the target's velocity and the length that the system has been running. Consequently, performing the conversion after the Patriot computer system has been running continuously for extended periods causes the [system's estimated Scud position] to shift away from the center of the target, making it less likely that the target will be successfully intercepted. See also http://cs.furman.edu/digitaldomain/themes/risks/risks_numeric.htm http://cs.furman.edu/digitaldomain/themes/risks/risks_numeri...

vilhelm_s 9y ago
There was just a single failure due to the arithmetic bug (and they patched the software the day after it happened). The general bad performance of Patriot missiles in the gulf war was because shooting down ballistic missiles is hard, not because of a discrete bug. Incidentally, although this is often described as a "floating point bug", the actual arithmetic was 24-bit fixed point. In order to convert from tenths of seconds to seconds they multiplied by 1/10 = 0.00011001100110011001100. If they had used a floating point format with a 24-bit mantissa, they could have multiplied by 2^-3 * 0.110011001100110011001100, giving 4 more bits of precision, which would probably have been enough to intercept the missile! :) Also perhaps interestingly, the problem only arose because a software upgrade had introduced a new function to do the conversion more accurately, but didn't call it everywhere. If they had used the old inaccurate conversion throughout, the errors would mostly have cancelled out. See http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html http://www-users.math.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/patriot.html

dogma1138 9y ago

Patriot missiles did more damage than Iraqi SCUDs fired at Israel (they are technically responsible for the only Israeli casualty in the war) in 1991 which is why right after Israel went on full steam with the development the Arrow. US missile defense was always a mess.

OhDagny 9y ago

One of the main problems with missle defense is probably achieving intercept speed. Ground based means you need to fight gravity. Why not have high flying solar powered long endurance drones that can swoop down and use gravity to get speed, in addition to rocket fuel? You put the drones up there. Kind of like the smart space rock, but you don't need to put it in orbit. Or you can use balloons to keep them up there. Lasers are just stupid retreads of failed spacewars. Or maybe balloons that can spread out with nanotubes or strong wires that will slice up an incoming warhead. I've wondered about setting up such things for a cheap anti-aircraft defense for guerilla warfare. Like if you make a huge balloon-lofted array of basically dental floss. Edit: I guess these are called barrage balloons

exabrial 9y ago

PAC2 is downright dangerous to the people firing the missiles! From failing to intercept, exploding too late, software bugs, the whole system is an engineering joke.

mikhailfranco 9y ago

Maybe it's only good at friendly fire? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/2877349.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/2877349.stm Patriot: killing allies in the skies and civilians on the ground since 1990.

gandhium 9y ago
> Patriot: killing allies in the skies and civilians on the ground since 1990. This quote is nowhere in the article, where did you got it?
mikhailfranco 9y ago
Son et Lumière - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/two-failures-in-one-day-missile-defense-is-an-embaressment-it-wont-work.html http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/two-failures-in-one-day...

ummm32 9y ago

Just wanted to say, for sure there's wrong stuff everywhere (a couple of versions of failed missiles maybe), somewhere in the system, but America is by far one of the best countries in the world to have been born, and I'm not being a crazy fan or something, just stating the facts. I think many people in there just like to critizice a little too much about everything, not usually from objectivity (not knowing how actually difficult is to keep things going ok). Many would like to have half a country like the one you have there. Just saying.