By Marshall Brain
Brain, Marshall. "How Patriot Missiles Work." 28 March 2003. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://www.howstuffworks.com/patriot-missile.htm> 26 February 2010.
The Patriot missile system has a remarkable goal: It is designed to detect, target and hit an incoming missile that may be no more than 10 to 20 feet long and traveling at three to five times the speed of sound. Newer Patriots can destroy incoming aircraft and cruise missiles.
Like Stingers and Sidewinders, the Patriot is a guided missile. However, the Patriot uses a somewhat more sophisticated targeting and guiding system that relies on ground-based radar, rather than human guidance. Because of this, the Patriot can lock onto incoming missiles, say, 50 miles away from their targets. At that distance, the incoming missile would not even be visible to a human being, much less identifiable. The radar guidance system can scan the skies looking for incoming targets; determine the trajectory, speed and heading of an incoming target; provide information to identify whether incoming missiles belong to friends or foes; track launched Patriot, and illuminate targets.
Patriot missiles are launched from Patriot missile batteries based on the ground. A typical battery has five components: the missiles themselves (MIM-104); a missile launcher to hold, transport, aim and launches the nearly 1-ton missiles (M-901); a radar antenna (MPQ-53 or MPQ-65) which detects incoming missiles; an equipment van (the Engagement Control Station, or ECS) that carries consoles to control the battery (MSQ-104) ; and a power plant truck equipped with two 150-kilowatt generators to provide power for the radar antenna and the ECS.
A Patriot missile battery can have up to 16 launchers, and there are spare missiles to re-supply the launchers as missiles are fired, so launching a Patriot missile battery is no small endeavor. Each launcher is roughly the size of a tractor-trailer rig, as is the ECS and the power supply truck. There are also operating personnel, technicians, support personnel, fuel for the generators, security forces to protect the battery, etc. required to support a Patriot missile battery launch. The current PAC-3 missiles cost two to three million dollars apiece.
