Failures are rare but they do happen. That said they could do this back in the mid 60s according to my dad who worked at the missle base on the Marshall Islands at the time. He didn’t go into detail.
From what I understand, the Russians had a nuclear ABM battery protecting Moscow which could have destroyed incoming warheads through the brutally simple expedient of taking it out with another nuclear explosion. Obviously, this would have caused its own problems, but it would have been preferable to allowing a direct hit on a major city...
The interceptor system from back in the 60’s or so was called Sprint.
There were actually two interceptors that were probably in development and test during the 60’s and were deployed in the mid 70’s before the programs were cancelled. The high altitude interceptor was Spartan, a 3-stage missile. The low altitude interceptor was Sprint, a 2-stage interceptor that was intended to intercept warheads not hit by Spartan. Both had nuclear warheads.
“That said they could do this back in the mid 60s according to my dad who worked at the missle base on the Marshall Islands at the time. He didn’t go into detail.”
Probably because the ABM warhead was a nuke.
That’s why those old ones “worked.”
The new ones are just a perpetual boondoggle, Star Wars Part Deux.