An Affordable Approach to Early Cruise Missile Defense,

The Patriot system upgrade being developed will result in the worlds most capable medium range air defense system. It is designed to buy back battlespace lost to recent developments in the air breathing and tactical ballistic missile TBM threat. The upgrades also reflect lessons learned in Desert Storm in defending against TBMs in combat. Although driven by the TBM threat, the upgrades include responding to another lesson learned in Desert Storm - the effectiveness of cruise missiles against ground targets. In designing the anti-TBM ATBM upgrades, it became apparent that an effective anti-cruise missile ACM capability could be obtained at little additional cost. The features needed for ATBM - better acquisition and track performance, improved discrimination and identification capability, bigger footprint, better lethality - resulted in system improvements that provide significantly better capability against cruise missiles. This improved ACM capability was recognized early and the system upgrades were tailored to take advantage of this additional benefit. The Army Mountain Top Experiment further explored how to take advantage of this by demonstrating beyond line-of-sight engagement capability. The net result has been the development of an effective, affordable ACM capability as a by-product of the Patriot system ATBM upgrades.