On March 25th the Houthi rebels in Yemen launched 7 ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia in defense the Saudis fired off several interceptor missiles to shoot them down, the Saudi government reported that they successfully intercepted all missiles that posed a threat however in video recorded this does not seem to be true in fact it appears that all interceptors missed, this is not the first time these interceptors failed the Houthi rebels have launched ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabian cities several times twice in 2016 twice in 2017 and one so far in 2018 each time the Saudi government claims they successfully intercepted all of them but in reality it is highly questionable if any at all were actually shot down,
The interceptor missile Saudi Arabia launched for the Patriot Pack to jam missiles with these missiles failing again and again in Saudi Arabia it begs the question is the Patriot completely worthless when it comes to ballistic missile defense.
Ballistic missiles are extremely difficult to shoot down significantly more so than aircraft due to their flight path difficulty in detecting at such high altitudes and high speed some five times faster than most aircraft,
The main weapon the US and several of its allies use is the Patriot missile the Patriot was originally designed to shoot down aircraft not ballistic missiles it wasn't until the Patriot Pack-2 the second major upgrade of the system that ballistic missile capability was added and even then it was more of an add-on to the missile the base missile itself wasn't changed the changes included changes to the warhead and the radar,
The Pack-2 and every variant before it used a blast fragmentation warhead which means they detonate when they are close to its target spreading metal fragments or rods over an area similar in a sense to a shotgun shell, these warheads are most effective against softer targets like aircraft as often relatively small amounts of damage will bring down the aircraft, with ballistic missiles traveling at some 5,000 plus kilometers per hour the kinetic energy alone means the warhead can still cause damage to the area,
The Pack-2 was declared operational and deployed just in time for the Gulf War in 1990 where it first preformed in combat during, the war the Patriot attempted interception of ballistic missiles over 40 times the effectiveness of the system was highly disputed with the US President George HW Bush claiming that it succeeded in 41 out of 42 attempts therefore having over a 97% success rate, since then further analysis paints a much different picture with some reports saying that there wasn't even one successful shoot down, after the war the Pack-2 was upgraded several more times the Pack-2 GEM the Pack-2 GEM-T and the Pack-2 GEM + are some of the major ones, again all were upgrades to the same base missile.
The US Sen designed a new missile for the patriot designed from the ground up specifically to intercept ballistic missiles called the Pack-3, the Pack-3 is a completely new missile and can fit 16 on each launcher where previous variants can only fit 4 the Pack-3 does not have a warhead it instead uses hit-to-kill technology where the interceptor slams directly into its target this method is much more difficult but has been stated to be much more effective at destroying the fast-flying ballistic missiles,
The Pack-3 also uses a brand new radar the MPQ-65 optimized for tracking and intercepting ballistic missiles the Pack-3 faced real threats for the first time in the Iraq war of 2003 between the upgraded Pack-2's and the Pack-3 they are reported to have shot down and confirmed 8 and probably a 9 short-ranged ballistic missiles now these numbers are from the US government but at least three of these intercepts were confirmed by a third party investigator so in terms of ballistic missile defense in the Patriot the Pack-3 is a weapon best suited and specifically designed for the job,
The saudis in all Houthi missile attacks have used a Pack-2 and these failures seriously call into question the effectiveness of that system against ballistic missiles saudi arabia has recently signed a deal to purchase several hundred pack-3 interceptors but i cannot find any information on whether they have received or deployed them yet, so far the Pack-3 still needs to prove itself in combat and remains to be seen how effective it will actually be against more than slower short-range missiles and this is true with most ballistic missile defense systems very few have been used outside of tests bad GBI SM-3 even the russian S-300V the version designed to shoot down ballistic missiles has never been used in combat,
The most effective ways in the past has been resorting to interceptor missiles armed with Nuclear warheads these create a large enough blast that it can missed the target by a kilometer and still take it out, however with the rise of conventional armed highly precise ballistic missiles detonating a nuclear weapon above your own city is obviously not a great solution only recently as technology began to slowly catch up to the threat and still remains to be seen how effective modern systems will actually perform.
