antimissile missile

noun

1. a ballistic missile for seeking and destroying missiles in flight.

Word History and Origins

Origin of antimissile missile¹

First recorded in 1955–60

Example Sentences

A 2017 profile of her in The Princeton Alumni Weekly described her job as “senior technical aid on an antimissile missile program, calculating trajectories of flying weapons and their debris.”

From New York Times

The antimissile missile is guided by a sophisticated phased-array radar consisting of more than 5,000 radar antenna elements that can detect and track 100 targets at a time and follow any given one far more rapidly than the rotating cone of conventional radar.

From Time Magazine Archive

One other Scud missile had been launched earlier against Saudi Arabia, but was blown up in midair by a Patriot antimissile missile.

From Time Magazine Archive

To counter such problems, Israel is developing the Barak, an antimissile missile that is launched vertically into the air and then dives down to knock out a sea skimmer as far as several miles away; the U.S. has contributed $10 million toward the project.

From Time Magazine Archive

Atmospheric tests would surely be useful in perfecting a warhead for an antimissile missile, but McNamara insisted that satisfactory progress could also be achieved with the underground tests that the treaty permits.

From Time Magazine Archive