The U.S. Navy's SM-3 (Standard Missile) is not a cruise missile. It is is a ship launched anti-ballistic missile used by the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

so now we had to. Is that so hard to believe? Was the debris really likely to be dangerous when it hit the ground? Really?

As another person wrote, the SM-3 is not a cruise missile. It does does not carry an explosive warhead. It was designed for ballistic missile defense and uses a kinetic warhead, meaning it destroys its target by impacting it at high velocity and ripping through it. The fact that there was an explosion indicates that something was hit.

The SM-3 is not a "cruise missile". Cruise missiles fly like airplanes, using air-breathing engines, generally at very low altitude. The SM-3 is a rocket-propelled, high-altitude "normal" missile.

... why the image is of such low quality? It looks as though it was recorded on Super-8. Given contemporary technology (especially military surveillance toys), is there no way it could have been captured on a higher-resolution format? That would, at least, resolve questions of veracity.

(Or maybe that's the point, mwa ha haa ...)

With an F-15 launched missile aimed at a satellite.

Yes the SM-3 is a 4 stage ballistic missile. The SM-2 is a cruise missile. The Navy's flight test #10 of the AEGIS system used both an SM-2 and an SM-3 to hit two different targets simultaneously.

For the record the Chinese 'test' left tons of debris in orbit that will have to be tracked forever. The American shoot down did not. Clean sweep.

The interceptor missile is supposed to kill the incoming missile or warhead by crashing into it and shredding it. OK, sounds good for something like one of Saddam Hussein's high-explosive Scuds. But what happens if and when the interceptor is fired at a missile with a nuclear warhead? Specifically, what happens to the 20-odd or 30-odd pounds of plutonium in the warhead? Saying "it burns up" sounds a bit farfetched. Does this dense material then fall to earth as a rain of lethally radioactive particles? And how many poisonings worldwide result?

I've asked this question before and nobody seems to know. Certainly not the Washington press corps, most of whom seem to have the technological sophistication of grade-school kids.

As far as I am aware, there are actually two types of missile defense systems, a ground-based system which has performed miserably and an Aegis-based system which has hit 12 of 14 targets in testing and is currently being used by the Japanese navy as a defense against North Korean missiles. The non-boondoogle, Aegis system, ironically, is a Lockheed product which was used to shoot down a Lockheed satellite that came from a failing program originated by Boeing.

An Sm-3(RIM-161) is an ABM, not a cruise missile...

Food for thought though. If China's pissed off about it, it probably happened.

Aegis BMD, using the SM-3, is designed to intercept missiles in the exoatmosphere. The idea is to hit the missile while it is in space so the remnant of the payload either remains in space or burns up on re-entry.

Regardless, plutonium falling from the sky would be a lot less hazardous than the missile missile its target and nuclear fission occured :)

"SM" stands for "Standard Missle." It is a ballistic missle, but it has infrared tracking and maneuvering. It is fairly new and fairly secret. Several web sites tell more. I had the best luck googling SM-3.

I don't know about that: I mean, missiles and satellites and the like burn up in re-entry, but it seesm to me that highly radioactive plutonium falling through the atmosphere, like micro-meteorites, would just come down as highly radioactive stuff. I can't see where high temperatures do away with the radioactive stuff. And as far as being beter than a missile hitting, at least then the radioactive contamination would be in a certain spot of the Earth, instead of spread thin like an oil slick.

Irocially, that would mean the Spartan-Sprint system of teh Nixon years might have been the better option, by using a nuke to destroy the incoming warhead with an uncontrolled chain reaction....that is, an atomic blast.

Even with zero military experience and little, if any, military technology savvy, I know there's a fundamental difference between a rocket-propelled conventional-style missile, such as that in the story and a "cruise missile", which is essentially a subsonic jet-engine-powered pilotless aircraft, i.e., it has wings/an airfoil. Such journalistic gaffes, which seem to permeate reporting on all things aviation, do little to increase my confidence in the media, especially when the writer is oriented towards technology.

Okay Manjoo, I won't keep up the smackdown about your cruise missile gaffe.. I just want to add that in the 60's, a megaton-size nuclear warhead was detonated by the US at about the same altitude in the Pacific some ways from Hawaii.. Don't know about the fallout, but an EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) knocked out streetlights on the islands.

Because it actually hit the target.

Those ABM systems relied on 'neutron' bombs to destroy inbound missiles with X-Ray Flux. Of course EM pulse would have fried every electronic device in the US too.

BTW no one's talking about what USA-193 was so it's hard to know why they shot it down. If it was a Lacrosse Radar Sat then its orbital insertion and dynamics were unique, mimicking a satellite much smaller than was claimed. If is was smaller than it was claimed then it wasn't a Lacrosse satellite and certainly not a KH11 or KH12 imaging satellite.

My own suspicion is that it was a one-off or early version of the next gen imaging or spy satellite that they put in orbit to test the viability of a non-space shuttle based heavy lifting program. The STS program is the only one in the US capable of lofting the latest production generation KH satellites which are about as big as a bus. Even the Delta 4 Heavy doesn't match the STS. So perhaps instead of waiting for unmanned rockets to backfill they're spending the effort to make smaller satellites. I really can't see the US using Russian lifters for that.