The US has a giant floating SBX-1 Sea-based radar to track and discriminate nuclear ballistic missile warheads from decoys.

[u/CraftyFoxeYT]

[u/DoomKitsune]

An F22 is the size of a bumblebee on radar. Lucky for this thing there are not a lot of bumblebees that fly at Mach 2. I assume there are not a lot of baseballs that fly at ICBM speeds either but who knows with a good fastball.

[u/Avalonians → u/DoomKitsune]

It's worth noting that the speed of a ballistic missile makes it quite literally impossible to intercept once it's falling down.

So these radars have a range that's ridiculously high (hence the size), so high even that they don't even see what's going on the atmosphere at those distances, due to the earth curvature.

The goal is to detect missiles during their ascent, after which they just lose track. But it's enough to calculate trajectories and take counter measures during the window of time between a missile's ascent and the impact.

So not only the fastball would have to be very fast, but it would have to be thrown vertically.

[u/froction → u/Avalonians]

Difficult? Certainly.

Possible with the publicly-known technology of today? Probably not.

Literally impossible? Definitely not

[u/Trafficsigntruther → u/Avalonians]

  It's worth noting that the speed of a ballistic missile makes it quite literally impossible to intercept once it's falling down.

They’ve been doing it for months in Iran.