Expert debunks US friendly fire investigation

[cal04]

The Pentagon has covered up major flaws in the US Army's Patriot missile system that prompted a battery to shoot down a British Tornado during the Iraq war last year, a top US scientist says.

Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), says "every one" of the claims made by a Pentagon probe into the shoot down was false.

Postol led an MIT research group to analyse the success of the Patriot systems in the first Gulf war. After that conflict, the US Army claimed the Patriots had intercepted 96 per cent of the Scuds they had engaged.

"The real intercept rate was almost certainly zero. Now we have discovered a similar but far more insidious cover-up following Operation Iraqi Freedom," says Professor Postol, in a commentary published in the next of New Scientist.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200409/s1210275.htm

[lazarus]

1. Wow

The only thing a Patriot missile can shoot down is our own planes?

[DS1]

2. I distinctly remember footage of bits of stuff hurtling towards Israel

during the first war. Are Patriot Missiles now capable of blowing themselves up and reversing ballistic direction :shrug:

[Sparky McGruff]

3. Iraq did fire some missles with cruddy guidance systems...

and we fired patriot missles at them. We just didn't have the ability to hit them. Our missles landed in the desert, and for the most part, their missles did too.

[Dover]

4. Oh remember all the coverage of 'surgical strikes' during the Gulf War?

Apparently can't hit the side of a barn from 10 paces.

[0007]

5. Now now! Five Generals sez were right on target with the missile program

I know it is true, cuz I've seen these experts on TV, and the TV never misspoken before!

[area51]

6. "patriot" missiles

More like faux patriots. Gee, I feel so warm & fuzzy that our hard-earned tax dollars are spent on a military-industrial boondoggle with a 0% success rate, and not on something "unimportant" like universal healthcare. </sarcasm>