In late March and early April of 2003, tragedy struck in the skies over Iraq. As the U.S.-led coalition marched toward Baghdad, two jet fighters -- a British Royal Air Force Tornado and a U.S. Navy F/A-18 -- were shot down, killing two British crew members, Lt. Kevin Main and Lt. David Williams, and a navy airman, Lt. Nathan White. These deaths weren't caused by Saddam Hussein's purported arsenal of missiles, or even by antiaircraft fire, but by U.S. Patriot missile systems -- built by Waltham, MA, defense contractor Raytheon and operated by the U.S. Army -- that had erroneously identified the friendly planes as enemy missiles. In a third incident, a U.S. jet fired on a Patriot radar unit that the jet believed was an enemy surface-to-air missile system. Luckily, this incident caused no injury in the air or on the ground.

For Raytheon and the army, it was deja vu with a deadly ending. During the Gulf War, the army claimed that Patriots were regularly shooting Iraqi Scud missiles out of the sky. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush even told cheering Raytheon employees that "Patriot is proof positive that missile defense works." Bush added that the system had shot down 41 of 42 Scuds. An investigation by a U.S. Congressional panel, however, concluded in 1992 that Patriots downed no more than four out of 47 Scuds -- less than 9 percent -- and added that "the public and the Congress were misled" by Raytheon and the first Bush administration.