All the countries that Raytheon now supplies with its Patriot missile-defense system

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Fri, 02/01/2019 - 2:51pm

Well, business is thriving in one area of the economy.

All the countries that Raytheon now supplies with its Patriot missile-defense system

Raytheon, one of America’s biggest defense firms, which reported its earnings today (Jan. 31), now provides its Patriot missile and air defense system to 16 countries, having added two new contracts in 2018. Patriot combines radar technology to detect incoming missiles, together with “interceptors” designed to be fired at and to destroy them, and the hardware to launch those interceptors. Fresh contracts for the system with Romania will bring in $2 billion, the company said; Sweden’s Patriot contract, also signed last year, could be worth up to $3 billion.

All the countries now buying the Patriot defense system:

United States of America
The Netherlands
Germany
Japan
Israel
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
Taiwan
Greece
Spain
The Republic of Korea
The United Arab Emirates
Qatar
Romania
Poland
Sweden

https://qz.com/1539125/all-the-countries-that-raytheon-now-supplies-with...

I wonder how people who’s ‘income’ comes from making bigger and better weapons to kill innocent people live with themselves. It isn’t the big shots and the rich boys and girls who die a horrible death whenever a Patriot missle is fired into a crown of people.

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Why do we name give our killing machines such cutesy names

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Comments

Submitted by Pricknick on Fri, 02/01/2019 - 3:14pm

Glad they're wasting their money

on a turd.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the public was led to believe the that the Patriot had near-perfect performance, intercepting 45 of 47 Scud missiles. The U.S. Army later revised that estimate down to about 50 percent — and even then, it expressed “higher” confidence in only about one-quarter of the cases. A pesky Congressional Research Service employee noted that if the Army had correctly applied its own assessment methodology consistently, the number would be far lower. (Reportedly that number was one — as in one lousy Scud missile downed.)
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/28/patriot-missiles-are-made-in-americ...

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Fri, 02/01/2019 - 3:17pm

IIRC an analysis published in IEEE spectrum way back when

@Pricknick
concluded that the most likely number was either 0 or 1.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Submitted by QMS on Fri, 02/01/2019 - 3:37pm

This is the problem with the weapons trade

The large pentagon contracts are spread out over many separate states and subsidiaries. The Raytheon plant in Middletown, RI makes parts for a multitude of weapons systems. Then assembled in the same bunker Cheney used to be undisclosed in. So the workers do not see missiles coming out of the assembly line, all shined up and ready to be shipped to the aggressor nations and re-sellers. Most solder components, stamp boards or some small operation. This is how every congress clown in every district votes for the big spending. Theirs is a part of the machine from which jobs and campaign funds sprout. We need to repurpose that food chain into something constructive for the health of the world rather than destruction, IMO.

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question everything

Submitted by dance you monster on Fri, 02/01/2019 - 3:56pm

It's good to know that Greece . . .

. . . recognized the danger it faced from incoming missiles. They did their share to prop up Raytheon's quarterly earnings instead of feeding their own people. Austerity never adversely affects the corporate bottom line.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Fri, 02/01/2019 - 4:18pm

And so, in honor of your observation I have finally

@dance you monster
managed to track down the exact quote that I have in the past mentioned both at dailyGross and here at c99p, from the 1966 novel Z, by the Greek author Vassilikos. (Capote would have called it a nonfiction novel, a term he invented to describe his own In Cold Blood.)

He had no missionary impulse. It was merely that he had known poverty and illness at first hand. That was his work. He knew that better hospitals lessen pain. He knew that, in another order of things, many intractable problems of our time would become clarified. If a bullet costs as much as a bottle of milk and if a Polaris submarine costs enough to feed a whole people for one week -- and feed it well -- what was the difficulty?

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