MIM-104 Patriot

The MIM-104 Patriot is a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, the primary system of its type used by the United States military and several allied states. It is manufactured by American defense contractor Raytheon and is named after the radar component of the weapons system. The AN/MPQ-53 at the heart of the system is known as "Phase Array Tracking Radar to Intercept Target" (in English: Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target), which is an acronym for "Patriot". Beginning in 1984, the Patriot system began to replace the Nike Hercules system as the US Army's primary high to medium air defense (HIMAD) system and the MIM-23 Hawk as the Army's tactical medium air defense system. In addition to these roles, the Patriot has been assigned a role in the US Army's anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system. The system is expected to remain operational until at least 2040.

The Patriot battery uses an advanced aerial interceptor missile and high-performance radar systems. Patriot was developed at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, which had previously developed the Safeguard ABM Program and its Spartan components and Sprint hypersonic speed missiles. The Patriot symbol is a drawing of a Minuteman (a militiaman) from the American Revolutionary War era.

The MIM-104 Patriot has been widely exported. The Patriot was one of the first U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) tactical systems to employ lethal autonomy in combat. The system was first used in the 1991 Gulf War with controversial results, and later successfully against Iraqi missiles in the 2003 Iraq War, and has also been used by Saudi and Emirati forces in the Yemeni Civil War against Houthi missile attacks. The Patriot system achieved its first undisputed kills of enemy aircraft in the service of the Israeli Air Defense Command. Israeli MIM-104D batteries shot down two Hamas unmanned aerial vehicles during Operation Protective Edge in August 2014, and in September 2014, an Israeli Patriot battery shot down a Syrian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 that had penetrated the airspace. of the Golan Heights, achieving the system's first shootdown of a manned enemy aircraft.

Introduction

The Patriot system was conceived in the 1960s, manufactured from 1976 for anti-aircraft uses and distributed in 1984. In 1988 it was adapted to also serve as a ballistic missile interception system, called PAC (Patriot Advanced Capability ). Each battery is made up of six launcher vehicles capable of transporting 4 missiles each (16 in the case of the PAC-3), towed by an M-860 semi-trailer. And they are controlled by another trailer that carries the MSQ-104 control station and are guided by an AN/MPQ-53 or AN/MPQ-65 radar, and interconnected by the OE-349 antenna system.

Use the Track-via-Missile guidance system and a radar terminal. Each missile is 5.31 m long, weighs about 900 kg and is powered by a solid fuel engine at a maximum speed of Mach 5. It carries a 91 kg fragmentation warhead. The effective range is about 70 km. Patriot systems have been sold to some countries such as Israel, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Spain.

Use during the 1991 Gulf War

Fire test

Before the Gulf War, missile defense systems were an untested warfare concept. The Patriot's objective was to shoot down the Scud or Al Hussein missiles launched by Iraq on Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Patriot's first combat use occurred on January 18, 1991, when it encountered what was later discovered to be a computer problem. In reality, there were no Scuds fired at Saudi Arabia on January 18. This The incident was widely misrepresented as the first successful interception of an enemy ballistic missile in history.

Throughout the war, Patriot missiles attempted to attack more than 40 hostile ballistic missiles. The success of these engagements, and in particular how many of them were actual targets, remains controversial. Postwar video analysis of alleged interceptions by MIT professor Theodore Postol suggests that no Scuds were actually hit. This analysis is disputed by Peter D. Zimmerman who claimed that photographs of the fuselage of Scud missiles shot down in Arabia Saudi evidence showed that Scud missiles were fired toward Saudi Arabia and were riddled with fragments of the Patriots missile lethality enhancer.

Dharan's mistake

On February 25, 1991, an Iraqi Scud hit a US barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers.

A United States investigation ruled that the interception error at Dharan was due to a software error in the system clock. Dharan's Patriot battery had been activated for 100 hours, after which the clock had slowed by a third of a second, equivalent to a position error of 600 meters. The radar system detected the Scud and looked for the place where it would be moments later in order to intercept it. But due to the clock error, the radar searched in the wrong place and found no missile. In this way the system assumed that it was a false alarm and stopped tracking the Scud. The Israelis had identified the problem and informed the US military and Project Patriot (software programmer) on February 11, 1991. Israeli experts had recommended rebooting the computer system as a temporary solution; However, American officials did not understand how often they should carry out this operation. The Patriot manufacturer sent the updated software to the military on February 26, but it arrived at the scene too late: just the day after the attack.

Percentage of correct answers and precision

The United States Army announced that the Patriot reached a success rate of 80% in Saudi Arabia and 50% in Israel. Shortly after, these figures decreased to 70 and 40 percent, respectively.

On April 7, 1992, two experts from MIT and Tel Aviv University testified before a congressional investigative committee. According to their analysis, the Patriot system had a success rate below 10%, even reaching zero percent.

That same day, two other experts from Harvard University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies spoke about their studies on the success rate and accuracy of Patriots in Israel and Saudi Arabia. They rejected many of the claims and methods that the two experts who produced the previous report had used. Their analysis consisted of quantifying:

• Rate of success - percentage of Scuds destroyed or diverted to depopulated areas.
• Accuracy - percentage of wild Patriots who reached their target.

It is important to appreciate the difference when the system is analyzed theoretically and when it is done in reality, on the battlefield.

According to the latest report, if an average of four Patriots were launched to intercept each Scud (three in the case of Saudi Arabia) and all the Scuds were destroyed or diverted, the success rate would be 100%, but the accuracy of only 25% or 33%, respectively.

Psychological effects

Saddam Hussein had ordered the launch of missiles on Israel in the hope that the Israelis would respond, so that other Arab states would enter the war in defense of Iraq. The Israelis were aware that the Scuds could supposedly be equipped with chemical or biological warheads. The possession of the Patriot gave the Israeli government a respite, as it was able to reassure the Israeli population during the first days of the war.

Iraqi bombings on Israel left two dead and several hundred injured. However, seven Israelis died of asphyxiation while wearing gas masks for fear that the Scuds were carrying chemical warheads.

System improvements

Since 2002, Israel has used the Patriot as part of its dual defense system against ballistic missiles. To intercept targets at high altitudes it uses Arrow missiles, while for other types of targets it uses Patriot missiles. Israel manufactures the Patriot near the Dimona nuclear reactor, where it also develops its nuclear weapons.

The PAC-2 or Patriot Advance Capability 2 was improved from the original PAC or PAC-1 and improves near-target burst capability.

The GEM is an addition to the PAC-2 that allows the missile to correct its course in flight; In the first Patriot all corrections were sent to the missile from the ground control center.

The PAC-3 is another improvement over the smaller and more effective PAC-2. It does not contain explosives, but rather uses its own kinetic energy to detonate the warhead of the intercepted missile. Due to its smaller size, a launcher truck can carry 16 PAC-3 type missiles (four containers of four missiles each), improving the capacity of the PAC-1 or PAC-2 trailers, which could only carry four missiles.. Not only are PAC-3s more accurate, but a greater number of missiles can be launched against a given target to improve the odds of intercepting it.

Soon, a variant of the PAC-3 will incorporate new and improved engines that will allow an increase in the range of the rockets to a maximum of 300 km.

However, what has been improved the most about the Patriots is their software. Raytheon has created software that allows PAC-1s to intercept even multiple attacks. This feature has been developed primarily to counter the offensive capabilities of North Korea, which has built devices capable of launching multiple rockets simultaneously. Additionally, this allows Raytheon and the arms industry to sell PAC-1 inventory left over from the two Iraq wars to South Korea.

Use during the Iraq War

During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Patriot missile batteries managed to intercept several Iraqi missiles, but they mistakenly identified and shot down a Tornado GR4 fighter jet as if it were an Iraqi missile, killing both crew members. Immediately after the incident, the cause was said to have been error on the part of the RAF crew. However, an American journalist who was part of the missile battery's operational unit stated that "the Patriots mistook a friendly plane for an enemy ballistic missile."

In this war the first PAC-3 missiles were launched in combat, with considerable success. The Patriots managed to intercept some missiles that were not Scuds, launched over Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. These missiles flew at an altitude of 50km (lower than that of the Scuds, which can reach the stratosphere), so there was much less time to identify and destroy them. However, although not all of the Iraqi missiles could be intercepted, the damage they caused was minimal.

Ukraine-Russian Federation conflict (2022-Present)

The Patriot battery is being used by Ukraine for the defense of Kiev. On May 4, 2023, Mykola Oleschuk claimed the downing of a Russian Kinzhal missile by the Patriot, although only a series of photos were published of this fact. The interception was later confirmed by US sources. For its part, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that Ukraine's claims were false and confirmed the destruction of 3 Patriot batteries, the same fact that was also not confirmed and only one destroyed battery could be seen (radar section), which was confirmed by the American government and its Ukrainian counterpart [1]

Operators

Saudi Arabia

• Royal Saudi Air Defence

Germany

• Luftwaffe

South Korea

• Republic of Korea Air Force

Egypt

• Egyptian Air Defense Command

Spain

Spanish Land Army: 18 in 3 batteries; the acquisition of the Patriot Aircraft missile system by the Spanish Land Army responded to one of Spain's military commitments at the NATO Summit in 2002. The first anti-missile missile battery MIM-104 Patriot was purchased at the end of 2004 from the Government of Germany for 54.2 million euros and arrived in Spain in May 2005. The battery purchased has an AN/MPQ53 radar, capable of detecting the arrival of an enemy aircraft or a missile against Spanish territory 150 kilometres away. Once the radar alerts, the PAC-2 Plus missiles that can intercept the missile at 120 km distance and above 20,000 m can enter action. The battery is assigned to the Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment number 73, with facilities in the province of Valencia, protecting the Mediterranean area, although initially it was in the Anti-aircraft Artillery Regiment number 74, in San Roque, to cover the area of the Strait of Gibraltar.

In 2014, the Spanish Government authorized the acquisition of two other batteries and ten Patriot missile air defence launchers from Germany for 41.1 million euros. The agreement would include a operations centre (ICC) and two 40-missile batteries, carriers, communications equipment and complementary logistics and maintenance elements. In 2023 the US authorized the sale of 4 new batteries to Spain with 51 Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC) 3 and 24 launch stations.

United States

• United States Army
  • Air Defense Artillery

Greece

• Greek Air Force

Israel

• Israeli Air Force

Japan

• Japan Air Force

Kuwait

• Kuwait Air Force

Netherlands

• Royal Netherlands Air Force

Poland

• Land Army of the Polish Republic

Republic of China

• Air Force of the Republic of China

Ukraine

• Ukrainian Air Force

Ukraine received several batteries during the Russian invasion of 2022.

Origin of the name

According to the US Army, PATRIOT is an acronym for 'Phased Array Tracking Intercept of Target'. However, many sources claim that PATRIOT is not actually an acronym (Patriot means 'Patriot'). That is why the word is usually used in lower case, without giving the meaning.