It was an abject failure insofar as missile defense was concerned. It failed to destroy the warheads, which is what a missile defense system has to do.

Thanks for the answer SOC

When I replied to your statement that the Russian missile systems were far superior to the American systems, I wasn’t trying to prove that you couldn’t substantiate this statement, I was more interested in finding out ‘how’ you normally substantiate this statement.

My point being, that I always thought the Patriot was in actual fact quite successful in actually ‘reaching’ Saddam’s SCUDs, only to have its job complicated by the fact that most of the SCUDs fired had their booster/rocket stage still attached to the actual warhead even in the final terminal stage of its trajectory, causing the missile to tumble and disintegrate, while confusing the Patriot system’s fire control computer. This freak scenario, after all, couldn’t have been predicted by the Patriot’s designers – or for that matter by the designers of the S-300. Why shouldn’t the S-300’s FCS also have been ‘confused’ in similar circumstances?

Or is the story/excuse of the disintegrating SCUDs just a myth?

Theoretically, but not necessarily. Combat and peacetime are two different things.

Oh, I know that there’s a big difference between combat and peacetime, it’s just that historically it’s always been found to be a greater difference for guided weapons than it has been for actual combat aircraft. Although I admit that while this was certainly true for the Vietnam war, it may be less true for more contemporary missile designs.