‘Scudbuster’ Simulations Are Poor Substitute for Reality

No Scud missiles yet in this latest confrontation with Iraq. But they’re there . . . somewhere. Then again, so is the next generation of Raytheon’s Patriot antiballistic missiles. It’s been three years since these missiles first dueled in the nighttime skies, and Raytheon promises that its new breed of “Scudbusters” is even deadlier.

Should Iraqi Scuds be launched against vulnerable U.S. positions, just how much better would these new and improved Patriots do this time around? What kind of technical breakthroughs do three years of analysis, testing and modification buy in antiballistic missile defense? The (unclassified) answers to those questions reveal disturbing realities about innovation in defense technology and the pathology of procurement.

“In the Gulf War, we learned things we never expected to learn,” says Stephen R. Stanvick, a vice president of Raytheon’s missile systems division and its air defense program manager. So ever since the end of the war, Raytheon has pursued an Army QRP--a quick response program--designed to implement that knowledge. The range of Patriot’s radar has increased by about 50%; the timing sequences of its explosive fuses have been enhanced; critical targeting software has been improved.

A weapons system that the Army and Raytheon claim enjoyed an anti-Scud success rate of better than 70% in Saudi Arabia and more than 40% in Israel (that performance gap is due to “operational differences”) has now been “meaningfully improved,” says Stanvick. More precise promises of effectiveness have understandably been classified.

Unfortunately, though, assessment of the true performance of the Patriots against the Scuds has been the subject of bitter controversy since the war’s end. Top Israeli military officials such as former Defense Minister Moshe Arens have flatly dismissed the Patriot as ineffectual. Careful examination of Army data by the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Research Service cast strong doubts on the success rates claimed for Patriots.

The weapon system’s sharpest critic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Prof. Theodore A. Postol, acknowledges that the Patriot QRP “has a number of fixes that go in the right direction, but we don’t think these fixes are going to fix the problems against the al Hussein (the Iraqi Scuds).” In fact, after extensively reviewing available non-classified data, Postol and his fellow critics have concluded that “there are no benefits that are real for deploying Patriots in Israel or Kuwait.”

Raytheon, of course, dismisses the criticisms as unfounded--pointing with confidence to classified information it says validates its Patriots. Putting aside, for the moment, the personal passions and institutional infighting that surround the Patriot, there are some agreed-upon facts that reveal just what the Pentagon and its contractors are--and are not--prepared to do to measurably improve its weapons systems.

For example, since the end of the war, neither Raytheon nor the Army has tested its improved Patriots against a real Scud. “We have not flown it against a Scud,” acknowledges Raytheon’s Stanvick. Raytheon tested the Patriot exactly once last year against a “Storm” missile--which is an Army-built missile designed to impersonate a Scud. When’s the next test? Raytheon’s not sure. “We are target-poor and waiting for target deliveries,” says Stanvick.

But who makes Scuds, and who has turned them into the ballistic missile of choice for aspiring underdeveloped countries, from Syria to North Korea to Iraq? Russia. Who desperately needs hard currency and U.S. technical support? Russia. If the Pentagon so desired, it could easily spend a few million dollars to get some Scuds and a technical crew from Russia, ship them to White Sands, and test our ballistic missile defense technologies against a genuine, real-world missile threat.

“I don’t understand why we didn’t go to the Russians and ask them to sell us Scuds after the war,” says Postol. “It’s reasonable to expect to see all these technology improvements tested against the actual weapons they were designed for.”

“They should be doing that; it’s a good idea,” agrees John Lehman, who was secretary of the Navy for six years during the Reagan Administration defense buildup. In fact, in the wake of the success of the French Exocet missile during the war in the Falklands, Lehman demanded that the Navy test its ship defenses against real Exocets: That data proved exceedingly valuable. Patriot supporters should be similarly inclined, he says.

“It seems to me that kind of recommendation from us would be kind of specious,” says Bob Stein, another vice president of Raytheon’s missile systems division. “I wouldn’t see the value of that. . . . I believe that we’ve run all the adequate tests necessary. I don’t believe that we should be waiting and hoping for another test.”

Indeed, Stein, who has been involved with the Patriot program for nearly 20 years, points out that live weapons testing is a small part of predicting performance. “Most of our knowledge of the system comes from a variety of fairly complex computer simulations that we do,” he says. “That’s where you really exercise the system. The value of the live testing is to look at the way the radar and the data confirm what you have done in the simulations. It’s very, very elaborate . . . “

But a vociferous portion of the defense technology community--including Lehman and Postol--fear that computer simulation, no matter how sophisticated or elaborate, is becoming more of a substitute for than a complement for live testing. In other words, too many weapons designers are choosing to simulate reality than live in it.

“Simulation has an important role to play,” says Lehman. “But too much of it is part of this insidious hollowing out of the military that takes place when you have this big of a budget crunch. Testing against the real threat can be expensive, but if we can do it, that’s what we should do.”

One can only hope that the question of how well Patriots can perform in wartime will never again need to be answered. But it is a sobering reality of defense technology acquisition today that we seem unwilling and unable to test the lessons we say we’ve learned in a real environment. Hardly a comforting thought for the people who are risking their lives in the Gulf.