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by MrBuddyCasino·12y ago·view on hn ↗
The Patriot was so overhyped and yet so bad in practice that Israel went and developed its own missile interceptor system (Iron Dome), because they realized that from the claimed 80+ % success rate, Patriots really intercepted less than 10%.

And yet they still successfully sell this system to many countries.

2 comments
I'm sure you realize that the Patriot system has been upgraded some in the last 24 years.

However, I think one of the brilliant things about Iron Dome is the fact that it doesn't try to shoot everything down. If a missile is determined to not threaten anything, it is allowed to crash on its own.

That may not be as big an optimization against opponents with good aim, but the people who fire rockets at Israel are often using old equipment that they can't aim well.

Hmmmm, won't be so brilliant if Russia is to develop a missile that corrects it's course after passing the air defense zone.
War has always been a game of each side adapting their offensive/defensive weapons to their opponents' defensive/offensive improvements. I expect that to continue. But that doesn't prevent me from admiring clever optimizations along the way.
The Patriot system used in 1991 was an anti-aircraft system that was hacked up to work against missiles. The Patriot system being fielded today is considerably different and much improved.

Iron Dome isn't comparable. Iron Dome is made to shoot down short-range rockets and shells. It makes intercepts against slow moving targets at low altitudes. It would not likely have much success against a mach 5 Scud that would spend only a few seconds within Iron Dome's engagement range before impact.

Iron Dome is vastly superior to Patriot in one key area, namely cost. Shooting down cheap Palestinian rockets and mortars at $2 million/missile for Patriot would not be feasible, but at $30-50,000/missile for Iron Dome is completely doable. I don't know what Patriot's success rate would be against these targets, but given its cost, it doesn't matter if it was 100%, it still wouldn't be workable.