Day 297: Crusade

Nearly a month into the war, the so-called Israeli problem was considerably less vexing in Riyadh and Washington than it had been in January. Delta Force and the SAS combed western Iraq with a fury that chased Scud missile crews into an ever-shrinking patch of desert near Al Qaim. Seventy-five to 150 counter-Scud sorties flew overhead every day. The Iraqis rarely fired now except when bad weather enhanced the concealment. From an average of five daily Scud launches during the first week of war, the attacks in the subsequent two weeks tapered off to fewer than one a day. Patriot launches diminished proportionately, and anxiety over the stockpile of PAC-2 missiles abated. (The Pentagon sent 120 new PAC-2s to Israel before resuming shipments to Saudi Arabia, much to CENTCOM’s irritation.)

Version 34, a new software package intended to correct Patriot’s proclivity for firing at false targets, arrived in Israel and Saudi Arabia on February 4. Israel, which commanded the six Patriot batteries on her soil, four of them operated by U.S. Army crews, had ordered all launchers switched from automatic to manual firing modes after the January 25 barrage in an effort to target only incoming warheads instead of debris. American air defense experts considered the order ill advised: men could not react as swiftly as computerized machines. Even so, the dispute seemed inconsequential, since the average warning time of incoming missiles, flashed to Tel Aviv from the Pentagon over the Hammer Rick line, had doubled from two or three minutes to five or six. In the American view — at least as it was publicly expressed —

Patriot was flawless. "The Patriot’s success, of course, is known to everyone," Schwarzkopf told the press. "It’s one hundred percent so far. Of thirty-three [Scuds] engaged, there have been thirty-three destroyed." In Tel Aviv and at the Israeli embassy in Washington, this gasconade was known as "the Patriot bullshit." The Israelis had a point. American claims were based largely on faith and wishful thinking. None of the twenty-one Patriot batteries in Saudi Arabia possessed "embedded data recorders," digital instruments capable of measuring precisely what occurred when a Patriot intercepted a Scud that had disintegrated at Mach six fifteen kilometers above the earth. That was because U.S. commanders feared the recorder equipment would interfere with missile operations. The Israelis, by contrast, had three recorders and a computerized system used to track all Scud fragments and analyze each engagement. Imperfect though they were, the Israeli data strongly suggested Patriot shortcomings.

This infirmity was hard for the Pentagon to admit. Having proclaimed Patriot a war hero, the Army was reluctant to pull its champion off the pedestal. (Not until more than a year after the war would the Army acknowledge that it had "high confidence" in only ten of the Scud kills proclaimed in Israel and Saudi Arabia; a subsequent study found that as few as 9 percent of engagements resulted in confirmed "warhead kills," although in other cases Patriots apparently knocked the Scuds off course or "dudded" the warheads.) Yet even the Israelis recognized the political and military utility in lauding the missile.

When an Israeli officer suggested publicly disclosing qualms about Patriot, Avraham Ben-Shoshan, the military attache in Washington, snapped, "You shut up. This is the best weapon we've got against the Scuds because it’s the only weapon. Why tell Saddam Hussein that it’s not working?"

In private conversations with the Americans, however, the Israelis showed no such reluctance. On February 4 at the defense ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, Major General Avihu Ben-Nun, commander of the Israeli air force, confronted Colonel Lew Goldberg, head of the Pentagon’s Patriot management cell. "The Patriot doesn’t work," Ben-Nun declared bluntly. Of twelve Scud-Patriot engagements analyzed by the Israelis, at most only three warheads had been destroyed. Some Patriots had apparently caused damage by chasing Scud debris into the ground. "You ought to stop producing the Patriot until you fix it," the Israeli general added. "Sir, would you rather have nothing until we can produce something that’s perfect?" Goldberg replied. "Or would you rather have this, which is doing a large part of the job?" Ben-Nun responded with a scowl and a shrug. Two days later, back at the Pentagon, Goldberg presented the Army’s top generals with a briefing entitled "Israeli-Patriot Issues" and classified "Secret-Close Hold." On his first page, Goldberg quoted Ben-Nun: "System doesn’t work."

As if to prove the point, another Scud hit Tel Aviv on Saturday morning, February 9, damaging more than two hundred buildings and wounding twenty-seven Israelis. One flaming chunk of debris landed in the middle of a third-floor apartment; the tenant dialed the police and complained, "The missile’s in my living room and it’s burning my home down."

~~Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War -by- Rick Atkinson