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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pl1,comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: status of PL/I as a viable language
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 14:36:56 -0600
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Bobby D. Bryant wrote in message ...
>On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 13:27:43 -0600, John R. Strohm wrote:
>
>> This is from memory, twelve years ago.
>>
>> Operation Desert Storm, near the end of the party, when Saddam
Hussein
>> was lobbing Scuds and the U.S. was going crazy trying to find all of
his
>> Scud launchers.  Incoming Scud detected, Patriot failed to engage,
>> missile hit, destroying (as I recall) a warehouse tent or a barracks
>> tent, killing some twenty troops.  Investigation showed that a timer
had
>> overflowed.  The Patriot system designers assumed that the system
would
>> never be operated for more than a few hours at a time, and the timer
>> couldn't overflow in that time.  This particular one had been up for
>> several days.
>
>I thought I remembered that the Patriot *did* intercept the Scud, and
>knocked it out of the sky but didn't destroy the warhead.  Then the
>warhead fell at a bad-luck spot, killing people who wouldn't have died
if
>it hadn't been intercepted at all.
>
>(By a strange coincidence, my memory of the matter is also 12 years
old!)


I very recently saw a History Channel documentary where they described
the incident pretty much as John described it. As I recall, they said
that the Patriot missed the Scud entirely because of the error.

I do recall some cases in Israel like you describe, not the barracks
one.

               Randy.