Wait a second! USA has no SAM or Counter Missile?

this is mi not star wars

This. At least they should have shown some alarms at the US Army. The radar screens of Cobra Dane, early-warning-stations in Alaska, Hawaii etc. blinking and detecting the ICBM start, the spy satellites in space detecting the IR-signature of the missile start immediately, the alarm lights at NORAD going from defcon 2 to defcon 1, the nuclear bombers taking off in alarm mode, arming the nuclear weapons, the President being warned and running into the atomic bunkers etc.
To enhance the tension.

The IMF secretary said that after the Kremlin incidinct the situation between USA and Russia is like during the Cuba crisis. This means highest alarm status for all forces and radar stations.


The other thing is the burning rocket engine of the Russian warhead over San Francisco. It just looks like a air-to-ground missile, like a HARM-rocket, a Falcon or a Hellfire.

But no intercontinental ballistic reentry vehicle in the whole world has a rocket thruster, an own propulsion system.
The rocket stages will fire until the tip of the ICBM reaches the highest point of the ballistic flight trajectory. Then everything shuts off. The platform with the MIRVs separates, flows some seconds in orbit, maneuvres a little bit, aims at the programmed targets and releases the reentry cones with the warheads.

The warhead is covered with a thick layer of heat shield, just like the American and Russian reentry capsules bringing the astronauts back from space.

There is a good explanation in the Wikipedia articles.
The MIRV will go down in a very steep angle, nearly 90 degrees downwards - and not as shown in the movie, flying in a flat curve, like a Hellfire or an appoaching cruise missile.


Last thing: the warhead would explode probably 1000 to 1500 meters over the city to cause maximum blast wave and damage at the target.
In the movie the warhead hasn't exploded although it was on the level of the scyscrapers already.


The magic magnetic floating of Brandt in India, Hunt's magic magnetic glas-gloves in Dubai, the magic contact lenses with a built-in high quality camera and the high speed printer in the suitcase which can deliver high quality sharp 1:1 copies of the papers with the rocket launch codes, the magic instant airbag cushion at the beginning of the movie... okay, magical IMF-gadgets.

But the sequence with the Russian sub and ICBM was intended to be realistic and serious. So much fail. This grinds my gears, as Peter Griffin would say.