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Talking about ICBMs, during the cold war it takes only about 30-40 minutes for a ICBM from Russia to hit the United States. Our retaliation would be just as swift, and the world would be in ruins in less than 5 hours. the USSR had 3 strikes on land and 2 by sea, the US had 4 strikes by land and 2 by sea. While the USSR had less volleys of death, they had more missiles. the US missiles are more accurate, the Russians lacking the electronic superiority, opted for "carpet bombing" style of attack. Regardless the result is the same: total annihilation of either country, plus 10% of the missiles that missed or malfunctioned strikes innocent nations, massive nuclear pollution worldwide, nuclear winter, new ice age, 98% of humanity dead within 2 years. I don't know what the fastest, regarding ICBMs, it really doesn't matter all that much. whether its 15 minutes or 40 minutes, there's no time for people to run away from the targeted city, industrial area, or military base. There's hardly time to get the VIPs into the safe bunkers, anyone else who isn't a VIP would be an expected casualty. the fastest missile in the world (any kind of missile) I believe is the SA-7 Surface to Air Missile. Velocities as high as Mach 7, could shoot down any aircraft nearly 100% of the time. Its intended as the SAM AA missile. Somtimes also misused to blow up ships. Its quite expensive, 7 million USD or 5 million Euro, found in several of the world's major militaries, on the black market, and in rich terrorist hands. Its a very effective AA weapon, it doesn't miss often, and due to the weapon's high velocity, there also really isn't much time for countermeasures. It is able to outrun any plane easily. most long range missiles of the ballistic type flies in a arch pattern, and shoot into space. their velocities can exceed mach 5. especially in space. most ICBMs and similar missiles are powered only on the flight up, in space & down to the target is precalcuated by computer and there's very little control. The highest they can fly is 1200 KM from the earth's surface. Its somewhere between space and low orbit. There's no real way to say exactly how fast the missile goes in space unless you wish to do some really complicated calculations yourself, inputting things like the missile's flight path, trajectory, fuel, weight, air speed on the way up, gravitation pull, solar winds, etc. Plus when the missile is up there, the missile's speed is usually independent of the earth's rotation. the earth can spin on way and the missile could just stay put.