Spartan was the long range missile used for area defense. It was designed to destroy incoming targets before they re-entered the atmosphere.
Because the interception occured much earlier in the trajectory of the target re-entry vehicle, protection could be provided for a large geographical area, thus the term "area defense".
The 30 Spartan missiles were all installed at the MSR complex. <$
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Sprint was the ultra high acceleration missile used for terminal defense. This was a "last ditch" effort to destroy incoming re-entry vehicles that had
survived the area defense provided by Spartan. Terminal defense occurred within the atmosphere only a short time before the RV's reached their targets, necessitating Sprint's ultra high acceleration
and dispersed launch sites. The 70 Sprint missiles were dispersed among the MSR complex and the four remote Sprint launch sites (RSL's): MSR complex (16),
RSL1 (12), RSL2 (12), RSL3 (16), RSL4 (14). <$
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