The Patriot missile system:
A. was designed to shoot down airplanes.
B. failed to shoot down a Scud missile that killed 28 U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War.
C. failed because it had been left running too long.
D. All of the above
is it D
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11110
Yes, D.
To determine the correct answer, let's go through each option and see if it applies to the Patriot missile system.
Option A states that the Patriot missile system was designed to shoot down airplanes. This is partially correct. While the Patriot system was originally designed to counter aircraft threats, it has evolved to also engage ballistic missiles.
Option B mentions that the Patriot system failed to shoot down a Scud missile that killed 28 U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War. This is true. During the Gulf War in 1991, a Patriot missile battery in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, failed to intercept a Scud missile launched by Iraq, resulting in the tragic loss of American lives.
Option C claims that the system failed because it had been left running too long. This is not entirely accurate. The failure of the Patriot system during the Gulf War was attributed to a bug in the system's software. Specifically, the internal clock of the Patriot missile system had a limited precision in tracking time, which led to a gradual degradation of accuracy over time. However, this issue was not directly caused by leaving the system running for an extended period.
Considering all the information provided, the correct answer is D. The Patriot missile system was designed to shoot down airplanes (Option A), it failed to shoot down a Scud missile during the Gulf War (Option B), and the system's failure was caused by a software bug and not by leaving it running for too long (Option C).