[Rick Lee]

I was reading some rant by Tom Clancy last week in which he explained how the Patriot or any other ABM system was never designed to defeat missiles like this. The Patriot is supposed to take the confidence out of the aggressor by letting him know he cannot bet on his missile reaching their targets. In Cold War terms that would be to punch holes in one side's "first strike capability". For Scuds and Katyushas, which are totally inaccurate and only made for terrorizing people, an anti-missile system is, at best, a morale booster for the folks on the wrong side of the missiles. Since the Scuds and Katyushas can't really be aimed, hitting them with an ABM system is still gonna make them explose and fall to the ground, which is just as dangerous to the people on the ground. The only difference here is that the warhead will have likely been detonated while it's still airborne. Still, that's a lot of debris raining down from the sky, no matter when or where it was intercepted.