Was Gulf War Hardware Oversold?

DESERT STORM GENERAL NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF once said its record was 33 for 33. President Bush was nearly as upbeat, claiming it was 41 out of 42. Last week a group of independent analysts said nobody can determine how many of the 47 threatening Iraqi Scud missiles were intercepted and destroyed by U.S. Patriot missiles.

Steven Hildreth, a Congressional Research Service defense specialist, told the House Government Operations Committee that the Army’s 1991 data would support a claim of only “one warhead kill.” Under fire, Major General Jay Garner confirmed that the Army, in a revised study, was dropping its kill claims from more than 80% in Saudi Arabia to 70%, and from 50% in Israel to 40%. The Army’s about-face represented a victory for M.I.T. professor Ted Postol, who triggered the inquiry by pointing out that even such nonexperts as careful cnn watchers could tell that some of the Patriots’ alleged kills were clear misses.

Meanwhile, the performance of other high-technology weapons also came under fire. Classified internal Pentagon reports suggested that the vaunted F-117A Stealth fighter scored 60% of the time, not 90%, and that only about half the 288 Tomahawk missiles fired actually hit their target, down from 85%. Even with these revised figures, the high-tech successes made the Desert Storm air campaign the most accurate in history.