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From: ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Patriot Question
Summary: Depends on Warhead
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.071551.11325@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 15 Feb 91 07:15:51 GMT
References: <1991Feb13.222821.7734@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University - HCF
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From: ins_atge@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Thomas G Edwards)

In article <1991Feb13.222821.7734@cbnews.att.com> rdz@dec-lite.stanford.edu (Ramin Zabih) writes:
>
>
>From: rdz@dec-lite.stanford.edu (Ramin Zabih)
>It seems that the Patriot's major shortcoming is that when it intercepts a
>SCUD, the SCUD can still do significant damage.
The intercepted SCUD can still do significant civilian damage, but its
ability to significant military damage (i.e. against runways or hardened
bunkers) is drastically reduced.  Intercepted missiles will also fall far
away from their target point.  This doesn't make a lot of difference to
a SCUD, but for a well-guided missile this could be the difference between
hitting the intended target and missing it totally.

Also, so far the SCUDs have had conventional warheads.  A chemical,
biological, or nuclear warhead would amplify the difference between
interception and non-interception.

>For instance, the size
>of the explosive charge necessary to knock out a hostile airplane is
>presumably smaller than that for a missile.

The larger the explosive warhead, the more difficult it is to accelerate
and manoeuver the missile towards the incommming missile.  The main
objective of the Patriot is to try to make the missile fall at a
non-target location, and also to try to disable the warhead.
It is impractical to have a large enough change to reduce the incomming
missile to little grains of metal.  Of course, nuclear warheads
on anti-missile systems would be able to do that, but they have nasty
associated radiation properties.  But it is often preferable to have
a small nuclear blast at altitude than a larger blast at ground level.

-Thomas Edwards