Hi. I’ve been watching this forum for quite some time now. After watching the news and reading the newspapers, a confrontation with Iran seems as though its becoming more of a realization. Now I just have a question, do you think the Patriot, the THAAD(when it becomes operational), or the Israeli Arrow system will stand a chance of shooting down Iranian Shahab 3s/4s if they decide to launch them at Iraq or Israel? Thankyou
By: sealordlawrence - 25th April 2006 at 17:26
Try starting a new thread with that one Rodolfo, the person most likely t have the answer is SOC i suspect.
By: Rodolfo - 25th April 2006 at 14:28
Redirected to a new thread
By: jackehammond - 25th April 2006 at 11:16
With exception to my amateur knowledge probability of hitting a ballistic missile in air with even most advance ABM (Patriot-3, Arrow-2) is between 40-60%. So if ballistic missiles are fired in numbers then they can penetrate any ABM shield. Like if 10 fired most probably six to seven will reach the target. The way i observe it, US and Allied forces took the advantage of first strike in both the Gulf wars. That is, hundreds of cruise missiles followed by a massive air strike. Enemy got paralyzed in just 3-4 hours of initial fight.
Dear Member,
Have to disagree. The PAC-3 is a totally different missile than the PAC-1 missile and is designed to engage at a lot closer ranges. It uses a self contained millimeter wave radar that has proven extremely accurate and relies totally on hit-to-kill and not an explosion near the missile. And where a PAC-1 and PAC-2 launcher has four missiles the same launcher would have 16 (sixteen) PAC-3s.
The problem would be IRBMs which have a far higher terminal speed. It is doubtful that the PAC-3 could intercept an IRBM warhead. But unlike the SCUD (ie or the improved SCUDs that many nations have) IRBMs are not in such numbers that systems like the THAAD or ARROW could handle.
Finally, the big fear that the US and Israel has is the use of an IRBM to explode a small nuclear weapon in the upper atmosphere causing a massive EMP. This could be devesating.
Jack E. Hammond
By: dilpakistani - 12th April 2006 at 19:37
With exception to my amateur knowledge probability of hitting a ballistic missile in air with even most advance ABM (Patriot-3, Arrow-2) is between 40-60%. So if ballistic missiles are fired in numbers then they can penetrate any ABM shield. Like if 10 fired most probably six to seven will reach the target. The way i observe it, US and Allied forces took the advantage of first strike in both the Gulf wars. That is, hundreds of cruise missiles followed by a massive air strike. Enemy got paralyzed in just 3-4 hours of initial fight.
By: sealordlawrence - 12th April 2006 at 18:54
As far as I am aware there is no such missile as the Shahab 4 in service, what there is is the,
Shahab-3, A basic ballistic missile with which the patriot/THAAD/Arrow systems should have little trouble.
Shahab-3B, Recent articles seem to suggest that this may also be called Fajir-3 (somewhat bizzare so I am not convinced) This reportedly has a warhead that is capable of manouvreing in the atmosphere, there are rumours that it uses russian technology. How this would fair against the systems you mentioned is anybodys guess, The americans will say it wont stand a chance and the the people who dont like them/ prefer the east/etc etc will say it will get through easily.
Of course any analysis is entriely subjective due to the highly secretive nature of both Iranian Ballistic missile and western anti-missile systems, not mention the issue of the ‘fog of war’.
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April 12, 2006 at 6:00 pm