The Sprint was a nuclear-armed point defense ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile), which was developed in the 1960s as one component of an American defense system against Soviet ICBMs. It was operational for a very short time in 1975.

The cone-shaped Sprint missile was powered by a two-stage solid-propellant rocket motor. The motor ignited after the missile had been ejected from its silo by gas pressure, and accelerated the Sprint with more than 100 g. Within seconds, the missile reached a speed of Mach 10+, and the extreme thermodynamic heating demanded sophisticated ablative shielding (the nose was already glowing red-hot less than a second after launch). The Sprint was guided to the target by radio-commands from the ground control system, which used high-speed phased-array MSRs to track the incoming ICBM reentry vehicles. The command uplink had to be powerful enough to work through the exhaust plume and the plasma sheathe around the missile body. Sprint's first stage used fluid-injection jet vanes for control, and the second stage had four small moving fins. The missile was armed with a 1 kT W-66 enhanced radiation thermonuclear warhead, which was detonated by ground command. It destroyed the target's warhead not only with the nuclear blast, but mainly with the very high neutron flux. The whole flight time for an intercept was expected to be not more than 15 seconds.

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