Extending the range of anti-ship missile.

Finn McCool said:

Again, as IDont said loook at the context. We now know that the Iraqis had NO WMDs. It is quite possible that that fact was taken into account. However that is going down too many rabbit holes and through too many looking-glasses, if you know what I mean.

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You cannot use historical hindsight and apply that to a situation. A SAM battery commander should not be in the position nor part of his duty to second guess if incoming missiles are equipped with WMD or not. In fact, at that time, it is widely presumed that the Iraqis did because gas masks were being handed out to infantry units.

I however tend to agree with IDont. It seems to me more likely that the US radars detected the incoming Seersucker, it was determined the that it would land in the ocean and the commander in charge decided not to fire and waste a Patriot. However the calculations were off and the missle landed on the shoreline.

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Then your tracking systems must suck even more because there is quite a big difference between a missile heading to a city and one heading to the sea. If your tracking systems cannot tell the difference of one and the other, then how do you expect it to intercept at all?

Bring these arguments to a court of inquiry and you are signing a career deathwish.

Wasting two Patriot missiles versus the possibility of lives lost especially if they were American... In this day an age, the bad publicity from not launching Patriots outweighs saving your ammo. If I recall correctly, there weren't that many enemy launches from Iraq during the 2nd Gulf War. So they had plenty of Patriots to spare and every launch that did occur certainly would've received extra attention.

Really, if it was detected, what would the dysfunctional Iraqi military at the time have learned if to the least the alarms were sounded? What does fooling the Iraqis into thinking their missiles couldn't be detected achieve?

crobato said:

You cannot use historical hindsight and apply that to a situation. A SAM battery commander should not be in the position nor part of his duty to second guess if incoming missiles are equipped with WMD or not. In fact, at that time, it is widely presumed that the Iraqis did because gas masks were being handed out to infantry units.

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Off topic, but it just irritates me. I know it was used as an official argument, but when is gas masks a sign of that you have WMD? I have a gas mask as part of my kit, but I think Norways Tabun inventory is rather low. Why should rougue states depend on others playing fair?

When it comes to that single missile, well something slips by once in a while just like the one that hit the israeli ship of Lebanon.

As to the US letting it go, thats crazy. You can predict that a rocket is going to hit the drink, but not a cruise missile! And if they were tracking it, that would have known that.