Nearly everyone is familiar with the Patriot missile, used in the Persian Gulf War to intercept incoming Iraqi SCUDs. One drawback of the Patriot, originally intended to destroy aircraft and not missiles, was that its fragmentation warhead was designed to detonate near the target, hopefully enabling high-speed shrapnel to destroy an enemy vehicle’s warhead or its targeting system. Unfortunately, this proved inadequate, in some cases allowing pieces of the SCUD to hit on or near its target anyway. This new Patriot is designed to actually strike the target in flight, enabling its smaller warhead to detonate internally, doing much more damage and disabling the target aircraft or missile completely. The real missile is 5.01 meters long and 25.5 cm in diameter.