My dad worked on Sprint. That near miss would have been a definite hit since Sprint was armed with an EMP warhead, a small nuclear device with a few kilotons of yield. Dunno how it would have faired against a MIRV.

It was cancelled after the ABM treaty.

You may know this already, but Vernor Vinge did a neat short story where an aged Sprint missile (or something very similar) plays an important role: "The Whirligig of Time".

Vernor Vinge. Best Sci-fi story I ever read that made me feel the VASTNESS of space was written by him: A Fire Upon The Deep.

I'm not sure I'd give it the title of the Best scifi story, but it's definitely very good, so I'll at least second the recommendation.

I did qualify my "Best" recommendation.

Fair enough - I read too quickly. I think I may have subconsciously inserted an "and" in place of "that".

Might have to bring that kind of stuff back, the way N Korea is going.

Sprint was amazing as a rather highly refined brute force bit of engineering - 100g launches, etc.

You know how a rocket is sometimes described as a 'controlled explosion'? The concussion from a Sprint launch was severe enough that a large area around the launch pad would be lethal to any unprotected persons present during a launch. It basically explodes out of the silo.