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
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
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