Nike-X
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Nike-X was an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system designed in the 1960s by the United States Army to protect major cities in the United States from attacks by the Soviet Union's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fleet during the Cold War. The X in the name referred to its experimental basis and was supposed to be replaced by a more appropriate name when the system was put into production. This never came to pass; in 1967 the Nike-X program was canceled and replaced by a much lighter defense system known as Sentinel.
The Sprint missile was the main weapon in the Nike-X system, intercepting enemy ICBM warheads only seconds before they exploded.
The Nike missile family included Ajax (front), Hercules (middle), and Zeus (rear).
The Zeus system required two separate radars for each missile it launched, with extras for redundancy and others for early detection and discrimination.
For even higher performance, the Hardsite concept replaced Sprint with HiBEX, which could accelerate at up to 400 g.
Anti-ballistic missile
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An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is a surface-to-air missile designed to counter ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles are used to deliver nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional warheads in a ballistic flight trajectory. The term "anti-ballistic missile" is a generic term for a system designed to intercept and destroy any type of ballistic threat; however, it is commonly used for systems specifically designed to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
A Ground-Based Interceptor of the United States' Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, loaded into a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska, in July 2004
Israel's Arrow 3
Royal Navy Type 45 destroyers (pictured), and French Navy and Italian Navy Horizon and FREMM frigates operate Aster 30 missiles
AD-1 missile test on 2 November 2022.