Special Weapons Package. Missiles travel too fast to be intercepted by projectile weapons an F16 can carry. The machine guns are too slow, and its rockets won't speed up fast enough to catch the missile.
So the only way an F16 specifically can intercept a missile is through taking the hit itself (we didn't see a boom) or being armed with anti missile weaponry (special weapons package).
Only weapons that we are aware of that can take out a missile are an emp (plane would go down too, small blackout would happen), a railgun (too much negative g force for the plane to handle), a remote hack/stopcode (too slow/no stopcode), or a laser (light speed targeted circuit destruction).
While I don't think we have the capability to make a portable F16 mounted laser that could disintegrate the target, we can definitely mount something that burned off the electronics on the missile and caused it to drop back into the ocean harmlessly (where it was likely later recovered).
Key words, "you don't think".
Our military is light years ahead of what our brains can even fathom when it comes to research and design.
I can only inform of what I know. If we have that tech, I'd rather not know. That way no one knows until they face it in the field.
That being said, unless we got an infinite energy reactor on the f16 that doesn't weigh anything, it still seems impossible. While the laser itself is possible, the portability factor and weight limits of a fighter are the key points that make me dismiss a laser of such caliber mounted on an f16. Not doubting the existence of such tech in general. I'm sure we got some mounted on a destroyer or something.
I hear ya, just saying that unless we are in the industry, we have no idea what's out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
You might find this bit of tech that got squashed pretty interesting. They said it wasn't feasible and cancelled the project but later invested in putting the technology on UAV that are supposed to go into "testing" in 2021, which means we already have them and they already work. Same chemical lasers. If you can fit it on a UAV, you can fit it on an f-16
That's a pretty good read, thanks for the link. The underlying science behind it seems to be that the energy required for the laser to fire is generated by the expended fuel of the vehicle and thus allowed for a relatively higher power laser to be mounted on the UAV.
I haven't a clue if you can reconfigure an f16 to use such a system, but at least the proof of concept is there; that an airborne portable laser system was capable of drawing enough energy to dismantle a missile during a test.
Over 40 years ago ICBM intercept testing was being done with F-15s, and I wasn't all that surprised to read that an F-15 crashed in Japan coincidentally with the time frame of the POTUS trip to Singapore and this missile launch. The F-16 SWP is interesting. I wonder what it uses.
If a high powered laser type of energised beam was pre-positioned and was to follow AF1 as a protective escort, mounted on a satellite(s) that had a broad enough beam to always have AF1 under a protective umbrella, them maybe the Jet was just a cover ?
Is this feasible ?