They also spent decades sending money to the US to buy influence and protection, which instantly vaporized the second a missile was launched their way.
As long as you don't look at the receipts yes, technically it works very well, in every other aspect it's a massive waste of resource and money.
https://abcnews.com/International/us-allied-radar-sites-midd...
This biggest loss was the mobile THAAD radar in Jordan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPY-2_transportable_radar There's also evidence they hit a building in Saudi Arabia containing a AN/TPY-2 but it's not clear if it was damaged
Plus a couple videos of fixed radomes getting hit by drones
Defending against ballistic missiles is well known to not be perfect, even against Iran's lest sophisticated missiles it's very difficult. But the high end missile systems are worth trying. The main problem is the lack of cheap drone interceptors which has been a blaring siren since Ukraine war started that the US neglected by not treating it as an emergency.
The C-RAM was in Baghdad, the high end radars hit were in the other gulf states.
The CWIS is probably the best anti-drone tool the US has but they have far too little of them and can get overwhelmed. They should have listened to Ukraine.
Hence why army folks were so alarmed by Russia/China developing and having ready prototypes that can go hypersonic.
[1]https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/comme...
"It’s worth pointing out that Hezbollah has managed to get rockets right down to the south of Israel today – and that is unprecedented. Never before has Hezbollah managed to get rockets so far south into Israel."
People in Israel are probably more accustomed to what a "High but not perfect" interception rate means.
But people in the US are just really dumb about things. They probably think it just needs "Enough money" or "A breakthrough" as if that's just a magic spell you can cast to get around physics.
However, modern anti-ballistic missile defense systems are effective enough that if you spend enough money you can defeat, with high probability, half to most of the incoming weapons. It involves firing many many interceptors against each incoming threat. It does not scale.
This is why it is generally deployed as a way to blunt, possibly not even defeat a North Korean nuclear attack. Nothing more.
Shorter range ballistic missiles suck. They still have the crazy high velocity terminal phase, but they are way cheaper to produce. I don't think it's possible to defend against them economically.
Good luck countering that, especially if they steer to be able to steer them.
Who has more missiles to throw?
And the Patriot is still top class in it's designed goal: shooting down ballistic and cruise missiles.
The second big thing is that no one has designed air defense to take into account effectively slow moving artillery pieces that have the same maneuverability as a missile.
Because that is what drones are and what has been the biggest glaring problem for but the USA, Israel and Russia (the gulf states both use Russian and US anti air defense).
And your comment makes 0 sense considering S-400 was more designed against aircrafts and cruise missiles than ballistic missiles.
Cat and mouse is always a factor in war. The patriot wasn't very good when it was first introduced and took some refining to become the gold standard, which it still is.
It still works very well against planes too, reaching out and downing EWACS aircraft at the edge of it's range.
They were neither designed nor expected to have 100% defense rate, but 50% is lower than expected. 75% isn't great either.
Decades-old Patriots shot down Russia's newest "hypersonic" missile.
> Top of class is actually S-4/500, this is basically acknowledged fact by even the Pentagon at this point
What? Source? You're describing the systems that have been getting floored the world over. Why do you think nobody is placing orders for these anymore?
For intercepts - there are absolute tons of AI videos out there. I wouldn't trust anything unless it's from reputable OSINT channel.