"phil hunt" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 18:22:34 GMT, Kevin Brooks
wrote:

snip

since what has been postulated is essentially an autonomous attack system
that does not currently exist even in the US. Third, the number of
Patiots
that can be made available is not a trivial number--count the number of
missiles available in the uploaded canisters of a single battery, not to
mention the reminder of its ABL that is accompanying them.

Do you have actual numbers here?

Six firing batteries per Patriot battalion, with eight launchers per
battery, equals 48 launchers per battalion. Each launcher has 4 rounds
onboard, so you are talking 192 missiles loaded out and ready to fire--not
sure what the ABL is, but safely assume at least two rounds per tube in the
battery/BN trains structure, so we are looking at what, another 384 rounds
readily available? So total Pats equals about 576 rounds for a single
battalion? Then you have the Avengers, with 36 Avengers in each corps level
ADA Avenger battalion, each with 8 tubes uploaded, so just taking into
account their initial upload you are talking 288 missiles without bothering
to consider their ABL in the trains. But that's not all, folks--each
division has its own ADA battalion, with another 24 Avengers, 24 BSF-V's,
and 40 MANPADS (or a heavy division), so again minus the ammo in the trains,
you have another 328 Stingers there. So your nominal corps force is going to
have somewhere in the neighborhood of beween 576 and 1,100 Patriots covering
it, another thousand plus Stingers (conservative estimate). Are you
beginning to understand why trying to out-tech the US is an unwise move if
you are really interested in asymetric warfare?

Brooks