Can the Saudi operated Patriot batteries intercept the Houthi Scud missiles?

[Luckschaden]

The nytimes posted an interesting article about this a few weeks ago:
Titled: Did American Missile
Defense Fail in Saudi Arabia? (I am not allowed to post links yet).

They looked at social media videos and pictures to analyse what happened.

They conclude that images of crashed parts show that only the rocket body but not the warhead crashed, and even the body seems intact. The missile that the Houthis likely used is designed to have the body separate from the warhead before impact.
The Saudis launched 5 interceptors.
The warhead impacted close to the airport, very close, given the distance the missile traveled and how accurate it usually is.

This means that in all likelyhood, all 5 interceptors either missed completely, or hit the rocket body but in any case they did not stop the warhead from reaching its target.

Later, the US presented the missile to the public (as alleged evidence of Irans involvment), and it was virtually undamaged, further corroborating the NYTimes report.


I thought that the Patriot system was state of the art and highly esteemed, and that the Saudis operated one of the most advanced versions and given their rivalry with Iran certainly trained to intercept SCUD missiles. So how surprising and concerning are these findings? Has this been reported on in more specialised publications?


(I tried recreating this in COMMAND, but the Patriot is unable to engage the missile because it travels too fast.)

[Dysta]

SCUD is just as ambiguous as AK-47 today, because other acquiring countries are copying SCUDs under their own industrial levels. Variousness is extremely likely to happen.

But, neither the success nor failure of intercepting SCUD could surprises me, it’s literally a flying Russian Routlette for both launchers and interceptors. So using the uniformed missile stats from CMANO is very difficult to tell how capable of both weapons are.

[Luckschaden]

ORIGINAL: Dysta

SCUD is just as ambiguous as AK-47 today, because other acquiring countries are copying SCUDs under their own industrial levels. Variousness is extremely likely to happen.

But, neither the success nor failure of intercepting SCUD could surprises me, it’s literally a flying Russian Routlette for both launchers and interceptors. So using the uniformed missile stats from CMANO is very difficult to tell how capable of both weapons are.

According to the article, the missile probably is a Iranian Burqan-2 - which means nothing to me.

[Dimitris]

Hi,

There was a data issue in the DB which prevented this from working correctly, it has been fixed and the fix is included on the next public update, coming soon.

[Scorpion86]

ORIGINAL: Dimitris
the fix is included on the next public update, coming soon.

Ooooooh! Will it have DB updates?

[Luckschaden]

ORIGINAL: Dimitris

Hi,

There was a data issue in the DB which prevented this from working correctly, it has been fixed and the fix is included on the next public update, coming soon.

Hi,
don't worry, didn't mean to complain about this. But good to hear that another fix is coming.

[ltsmash]

ORIGINAL: Luckschaden

According to the article, the missile probably is a Iranian Burqan-2 - which means nothing to me.

The Burqan (or Burkan) 2 is a type of Scud based on an Iraian Qiam 1 or Scud C, at least according to Wikipedia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_H-2.