Military Weapons Research Paper

Ordinarily in 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and quickly began to move towards the Saudi Arabian Border. In response, the United States and an allied coalition force planned strategic military attacks, known as Desert Storm. This essay will explain the United States’ Air Defense Artillery’s introduction into the war, effectiveness of engagements, to including political role of the Patriot Missile. First off on June 1990 when 11th Air Defense Artillery (ADA) Brigade was attached to the XVIII Airborne Corps. Afterwards, Saddam Hussein was in the Kuwait area which did move a number of scuds to the desert of western Iraq. Saddam Hussein moved the scuds to have the capabilities of conducting a threat with air power; also to try threatening
Israel. General Powell’s decided that the ARMY needed to have air power to control the war, nevertheless; that is when the Patriot battery got involved in the war. When the central command team asked for a Patriot unit from Fort Bliss the 11th Brigade command started to plan for a deployment of a Patriot missile system. On August 1990 with secrecy, Battery B, 2d Battalion, 7th ADA, from the 11th Brigade loaded personnel, and equipment for a flight to Saudi Arabia. The Battery arrived Saddam Hussein, then decided to start an invasion with scud missiles, and which the Battery would not be able to prevent it since the Patriot Advance Capabilities 2 (PAC2) had not arrived. The reasons the PAC2 missile were not yet in the area of operation, it is because the 11th Brigade only had PAC1 missile’s due to the fact that the PAC2 missile were still in testing. As soon as the mission required PAC2 missiles they had gotten disconnected, and Raytheon requested to have the PAC2 missile production contract into operation. After approval, the accelerated flow of PAC-2 missile increased the operations of Patriot units in the southwest Asia, which was sufficient to conduct DESERT SHIELD operations. Second of all capabilities of PATRIOT we extensively expanded throughout Desert Strom.
Many debates took place discussing the effectiveness of PATRIOT weapon systems. This statement was made to “General Uri Ram (retired), who commanded the Patriot units in Israel during the war, was quoted in an interview as saying, […] ‘Let's get the record straight. Patriot was a success, but it wasn't perfect. ...Patriot was of enormous strategic significance and helped save lives in Israel from SCUD attacks...’" (Stein, 1992, Para. 9) This quote is important because it shows that the US provided successful air defense while recognizing that the weapons system had flaws. The weapon was effective at deterring SCUD attacks from reaching their target. Desert Storm helped identify limitations, inconsistencies, and deficiencies with the PATRIOT weapon system. These issues were all noticed as they pertain to software and hardware of the Raytheon based weapon system. One important identified error: “In mid-February of 1991, Israeli troops had discovered a defect in the Patriot missile system. They discovered that if the system runs for long periods of time, then it becomes inaccurate.”(Morgan, Roberts, 2002, para. 4) This was important because the Raytheon designed weapon system was untested in combat against SCUD missiles. The testing of PATRIOT required significant resources to test its viability and accuracy. Being inaccurate is a significant flaw in a weapon system designed to
intercept targets moving with a high velocity. Raytheon, the manufacture of PATRIOT, quickly made a patch correcting the deficiency of the Army Air Defense Weapon System. “On February 25th, 1991, a Patriot Missile system that had been running for over 100 hours at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia had failed to intercept a SCUD missile. The SCUD hit an Army Barracks, killing 28 Americans. On the next day, the Bug Fix for the system arrived in Dhahran.”(Morgan, Roberts, 2002, para. 6) This is patriot’s largest failure of the war. This failure became a large case study of ethics in software engineering. The error identified was: “The problem is that computers do not store information as a standard decimal. Instead, they use binary code, which cannot accurately store 1/10th of a second.” (Morgan, Roberts, 2002, para. 7) The longer the system would run compounded this error. This error worsened when the timing calculation was accurate for tracking missiles, not for intercepting them. “[T]he system would track missiles, aim itself, and decide exactly when to launch its own missiles using the internal clock, which was accurate. In effect, the system would use an accurate timepiece to decide the missile’s location, moreover how fast it is moving, and when to fire the defensive missiles. But while waiting to fire the missile system would use the less accurate clock to determine when it should fire. The calculations made using the old algorithm and those made by the new algorithm differed by as much as 1/3 of a second after running the system for twenty four hours. A SCUD missile can travel more than one mile per second.” (Morgan, Roberts, 2002, para. 8) This error proved to be deadly in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. This was not the only limitations identified during Desert Storm. Finally, even though patriot had an 80 percent success rate in Saudi Arabia and a 50 percent success rate in Israel (Simon, 1996, 5), the United States’ involvement with the patriot system in Israel played a great impact in the war in both a strategic and political aspect.
Prior to the war, the United States made an agreement that Israel would not get involved even if attacked by Iraq. The United States and coalition leaders knew Israel intervening in the war would be detrimental to the strategic operations of the war. The fear was that another Israel-Muslim conflict would consequently cause Muslim coalition forces such as Syria to back out. On January 17th, 1991, Iraq fired scud missiles landing in the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. After the attacks, Israel wanted to retaliate and were hesitant of the prior noninvolvement agreement. In order to persuade Israel, the United States decided they needed to not only inform Israel of the negative ramifications of striking back but decided to also give them an incentive. Additionally to paying for damages caused by Iraqi scuds the United States promised to deploy patriot units to intercept any incoming missiles within the first 24 hours of operations. As the Patriot units began their initial engagements it was evident they were not fully prepared to intercept the incoming missiles from Iraq effectively. Soon after, more air defense forces deployed to accommodate the influx of scud missiles targeting the cities of
Israel. Though the Patriot missiles were able to effectively hit their targets it was not as effective as in Saudi Arabia because the remainder of the engaged scud missiles were still landing in the cities. Nonetheless, the presence of patriot was enough incentive to keep Israel from not intervening after being attacked. “The U.S. decision to side-line and restrain Israel was successful due to a balanced strategy of positive and negative inducements” (Lasenksy, 1999, 3). With the United States deploying patriot units, Israel refrained from being an offensive force during the war, allowing the coalition forces to control the outcome of the war, prevented negative strategic outcomes, and paved a way for future peace treaties in the future. Overall, the mission DESERT SHIELD is what got ADA moving forward. To include better equipment, and technology to improve the capabilities. In the beginning ADA did not have the priority in getting the new advanced missile PAC-2, even after knowledge of how critical for ADA it was for the safety of the country to include the end results of the operation DESERT STORM. After the mission was a great success, because of all the data gathered from all the engagement situations the Patriot unit had encountered. At this point the Patriot unit was set in place in Israel to also intercept missiles. Patriot in today’s world is highly requested for air power because is the greatest threat of all.