THE WORLD

By Paul Richter Times Staff Writer

November 2 2002

WASHINGTON -- A decade after its fiery combat debut in the Persian Gulf War, the capabilities of the Patriot antimissile system remain so uncertain that it will play only a secondary role if the United States again goes to war with Iraq, say U.S. officials and analysts.

The Patriot, the Pentagon's most advanced antimissile system, is already deployed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Israel to help defend against Iraq's inventory of two dozen to four dozen Scud missiles.

Yet despite an intensive development effort since 1991, the Patriot's ability to destroy all its targets is considered so unreliable that Pentagon planners are focusing their antimissile efforts on how best to find and destroy Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's mobile Scud launchers before the missiles are fired, according to U.S. and private analysts.

The missile defense mission is a top priority in war planning because Hussein is expected to try to bombard U.S. troops, Israelis or other allies with Scuds tipped with chemical or biological warheads if attacked. In the Gulf War, the most damaging attack on U.S. forces was a conventional Scud strike that hit an American barracks in Saudi Arabia, killing 28 soldiers and injuring 99.

Iraqi Scuds also hit Israel, but the U.S. applied diplomatic pressure and used financial inducements to keep the Jewish state from responding. This time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has warned the Bush administration that Israel will strike back if Scuds cause civilian casualties.

Fearful that an Israeli response would inflame the Arab world, the U.S. has made eliminating Scuds a priority.

Pentagon officials say they are confident that the Patriot will eventually work reliably. But they acknowledge that the model now in the field, the Patriot Advance Capability-2, has limitations. A more advanced version, the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3, continues to struggle through development.

The PAC-3 ran into unexpected problems during a round of testing this year. Fewer than half the tests were successful, prompting Army officials to put off full-scale production for at least a year.

Some private defense experts question whether even the PAC-3 could take out Scuds in battle conditions, noting that the Iraqi missiles fly an unpredictable path that makes it hard for Patriots to hit them.

And some contend that the Patriot may be ineffective against newer short-range Iraqi missiles, which could be launched in volleys that they say could overwhelm the Patriot system.

Patriots rely on sophisticated radar and computers to identify threatening missiles or aircraft when they come within range. The system automatically fires interceptor missiles that travel at 4,000 feet per second and destroy the enemy missiles as they arc down toward Earth.

Asked if the military now views the Patriot as the answer to the Iraqi missile threat, defense officials express confidence in the technology but stop short of promising that it can be relied on to knock down a high percentage of Scuds.

"It's been tested pretty rigorously, we've been at it a long time, and we're ready to declare it's a useful military system," Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Missile Defense Agency, said Thursday at a meeting with reporters.

During the Gulf War, the weapon at first appeared to be highly successful as a "Scud buster." Then-President Bush declared that in 42 attempts, Patriots had destroyed 41 Scuds.

But soon it became clear that the Patriot interceptors were often striking only metal debris from disintegrating Scuds, not touching their warheads. After the war, a congressional study found that the Patriots had been effective against only four Scuds; one Israeli study contended the number was zero.

Plans to give the Patriot a limited role in any new campaign against Iraq come as a disappointment to missile defense advocates who have embraced it as proof that this complex, expensive technology can work.

Critics of the program point to the problems as evidence of the immense challenges the Bush administration faces in building the much larger and more elaborate long-range missile defense system that is its ultimate goal.

James M. Lindsay, a former National Security Council aide who advocates a limited national missile defense, said the Patriot "is going to play only a supporting role.... The military is hopeful for what Patriot could do, but they clearly don't intend to rely on it solely."

Lindsay, now a Brookings Institution scholar, said this means missile defense advocates must confront the core questions of the missile defense program, "which has been long on promises and short on products."

There is also skepticism about the Patriot from America's closest military ally in the region, Israel.

Israel has deployed Patriot missile batteries since the Gulf War. But it has also built its own missile defense system, the Arrow. The Israelis say the Arrow -- half the costs of which have been paid by the United States -- will eventually be able to protect the entire country.

The Arrow is different from the Patriot in several respects. To begin with, it fires missiles that seek to blow up enemy warheads at a higher altitude, thus enabling it to protect a larger area.

And by blowing up warheads higher above Earth, these missiles are better able to disperse chemical agents and expose any biological agents to sunlight, which can destroy them.

By deploying both the Arrow and the Patriot, the Israelis have two shots at eliminating enemy missiles, an arrangement known as a layered defense.

Even with two systems, the Israelis remain determined to try to destroy Iraq's mobile Scud launchers in western Iraq before they can fire rockets. The Israeli government has been pressing the Bush administration to pledge that U.S. forces will complete that job at the opening of any campaign against Hussein.

Already, news reports from the region say U.S. or Israeli special forces have been active in western Iraq looking for Scud launchers and the weapons stores that Hussein is believed to have hidden there.

The Patriot has a long history, involving cost overruns and delays, periods of progress and unexpected reversals of fortune.

Begun as an antiaircraft weapon in 1965, the Patriot was forced to take on the much tougher job of destroying Scuds during the Gulf War.

The latest Patriot system has a more fine-grained radar than the one now in the field. It enables operators to distinguish enemy warheads from other flying objects. The missile is more maneuverable and better able to destroy warheads because it collides with them at high speed, rather than setting off an explosion in the air close by.

In tests conducted by its builder, Lockheed Martin, the new Patriot performed well, hitting its target in 11 of 12 tries. Advocates say this is proof the program can work.

"Not only can you hit a bullet with a bullet -- you have been doing it repeatedly. For some reason, that hasn't seeped into the talk shows and media debates," Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), chairman of the House Armed Services research and development subcommittee, declared in a hearing with Pentagon missile defense officials last year.

Yet the results were not as good when the new Patriot was tested by the Army this year under conditions more demanding and closer to those the Patriot would confront in combat.

In some tests, the interceptor missiles failed to strike their targets; in some cases, they didn't even leave the launchers. There were electrical problems and software glitches, and in one case the missile nicked its target but didn't destroy it.

Philip E. Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester from 1994 until 2001, said that based on those tests, the Patriot could be expected to bring down less than 50% of incoming Scuds.

Gen. Kadish, the missile defense boss, said he was "disappointed" in the test failures, but he insisted that they did not reflect a weakness in design.

Some defense experts believe that additional problems with the new Patriot will emerge if it has real-life confrontations with Scuds.

Scuds, which were built on the crude design of Germany's World War II rockets, are not engineered with precision and can wobble or corkscrew in flight.

Some experts contend that the Patriot is unprepared for such challenges because, with the exception of two 1997 flights, there has been little testing of Patriots against Scuds.

This year, the Senate included language in the defense authorization bill requiring the Pentagon to test the Patriot against Scuds.

Defense experts say it makes sense for Pentagon war planners to place their greatest emphasis on destroying Scud launchers rather than relying on the new missile-defense hardware.

Lindsay, of Brookings, says this is true because of growing confidence in Special Forces' ability to locate and destroy launchers. Although U.S. forces failed badly at this task in the Gulf War, since then there have been marked improvements in the military's imaging and surveillance technologies and in its ability to quickly reach and destroy such targets.

The Pentagon has announced plans to send the 40 advanced PAC-3 missiles that have been built so far to the Gulf, even though the new system is still being tested. And Kadish has suggested that the production rate of two a month be stepped up.

Even so, former weapons tester Coyle says he believes the PAC-3 "won't be [present] in very large numbers. And they won't be able to rely on them."

-- Anonymous, November 02, 2002