WordNet
n. a defensive missile designed to shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles; "the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks placed limits on the deployment of ABMs" [syn: ABM]
Usage examples of "antiballistic missile".
Unlike in 1991, Israel now has the Arrow antiballistic missile system, and although it is unproven, it has done well in tests and Jerusalem hopes it can be relied on.
Eventually, over the years, the Caspian Sea station was able to produce an electronic map of virtually all the ground-based Soviet missile-tracking radars, including the antiballistic missile radar systems at a test range a thousand miles away.
We have experimental ground-based ABM and ASAT, antiballistic missile and antisatellite, laser weapons.
Russia itself, thanks to an efficient antiballistic missile system that had been extended from mere point defense of major cities ever farther into the hinterland, had less and less to fear from America's nuclear might.
Their primary mission is the suppression of enemy air defenses and antiballistic missile defense.
It's most effective above thirty thousand feet, which makes it a perfect antiballistic missile and antisatellite weapon, but we can get a one-quarter- to one-half-kiloton-equivalent yield even at sea level.
Critics pointed out that Star Wars was not only a violation of the 1972 ABM (antiballistic missile) treaty, but a temptation to thermonuclear war because it promised to make such a war survivable.