U.S. Army's Patriot System Making Mistakes, BBC Says

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April 9 (Bloomberg) -- Faults in the U.S. Army's Patriot missile system may have caused a U.K. Royal Air Force jet to be shot down in Iraq last year, the British Broadcasting Corp. said, citing a reporter who was present when the incident happened.

U.S. officials originally said the RAF Tornado aircraft was to blame for the accident on March 23, 2003, near the border with Kuwait, the BBC reported on its Web site.

The Army unit operating the Patriot system knew it misidentified aircraft as missiles dozens of times a day, U.S. journalist Robert Riggs told the BBC. Riggs was with the unit that shot the plane down, the BBC said.

A report issued by the U.S. Army at the end of the invasion confirms that the Patriot identified non-existent ballistic missiles, and said Patriots had never been tested across the kind of ranges and in the kind of ``confused airspace'' experienced in the Gulf, the BBC reported.

Raytheon Co., the world's largest missile maker, makes the newest version of the Patriot system with Lockheed Martin Corp., the largest U.S. defense contractor. A spokesman for Lockheed didn't return a call seeking comment.

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