[twistedpair]

That's nothing, the Sprint Missile was able to do 100G acceleration. That's 0-Mach 10 in 5s. So fast air friction made it glow white hot instantly. That what you can do with no human on board.

http://www.nuclearabms.info/Sprint.html

[serf]

I thought that was cool until I read about the hibex at the bottom of that same page.

"However, it was literally a last ditch missile and was designed to intercept an incoming RV at less than 6,100m (20,000ft) altitude. At that altitude, the incoming RV would be traveling at around 3,000m/sec (10,000ft/sec) so a very fast reaction time was essential to insure interception. In fact, HiBEX was designed to have exited from its silo within 1/4 second and it accelerated at over 400g."

[twistedpair]

Note though that "interception" was a nuclear warhead (neutron bomb). It would still be all out nuclear war, but you'd rather set off a small nuke a few miles from the silos than have the incoming 25MT beast hit the base.

[themodelplumber]

Is there any imagery or video available that shows the white-hot glow happening?

[njharman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msXtgTVMcuA

[themodelplumber]

I see a bunch of dark missiles. Where is the glowing white one?

[hughlomas]

It specifically highlights the moment, with a caption on screen.

[gsands]

Starting at 0:50 of the video.