The Raytheon company announced June 5 that its Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missiles, or GEMs, destroyed two surrogate ballistic missile targets in a test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.
The test was the first of four development flight tests to be conducted by the U.S. Army's Patriot Lower Tier Project Office using Raytheon's newly developed Patriot system post-deployment build-6, or PDB-6, software, the company said.
"This flight test is another significant achievement in evolving and enhancing the capabilities of the Patriot system as the combat-proven, premier air defense solution for our warfighters," said Rick Yuse, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems vice president of Integrated Air Defense.
"Without a doubt, this test demonstrated the Configuration-3/PDB-6 system's capability to search, detect, track, classify, engage and kill two surrogate full-body tactical ballistic missile targets."
Three Patriot fire units deployed in a battalion configuration supported the evaluation of this mission's objectives. Two GEMs were ripple-fired at an incoming tactical ballistic missile, and as the intercept occurred, the Patriot Configuration-3 radar successfully detected, tracked and engaged a second target, the report said.
A third GEM successfully intercepted the second incoming TBM while managing the first intercept, Raytheon said. The capabilities incorporated into PDB-6 are the next step in the evolving growth for Patriot. This update is composed of user-requested improvements, planned performance improvements, and improvements that had resulted out of lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom, it said.
The targets for the mission were Patriot-as-a-Target, a Patriot legacy missile modified to represent a short-range ballistic missile target. Test data indicated that communication and data transfer between the Patriot radar, engagement control station, and Patriot launcher enabled the GEMs to destroy both targets, Raytheon said
