Mystery Missile Launch Seen off Calif. Coast

[DoYouEverWonder]

So much for those expensive missile interceptor systems that are supposedly protecting us.

Glad the Pentagon isn't worried, that's the same reaction they had on 9/11, even after the second Tower was hit.

[justdrew]

From Reddit:

NOTAM for LA.

KZLA LOS ANGELES A2832/10 - THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS ARE REQUIRED DUE TO NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION ACTIVATION OF W537. IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY, ALL NON-PARTICIPATING PILOTS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID W537. IFR TRAFFIC UNDER ATC JURISDICTION SHOULD ANTICIPATE CLEARANCE AROUND W537 AND CAE 1176. CAE 1155 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1316 & CAE 1318 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1177 WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. W537 ACTIVE, CAE 1176 CLOSED. SURFACE - FL390, 09 NOV 20:00 2010 UNTIL 10 NOV 01:00 2010. CREATED: 08 NOV 20:52 2010

Some interesting comments and insight to possibly be found in thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comm ... nia_coast/

haven't look at that thread yet, but this NOTAM is for this evening not last evening...

So did someone launch early by mistake?

but none of the video shows it starting out at sea level, I don't know if that is a missile launch, could it be a thick contrail coming over the horizon? Seems to thick for a contrail though.

and possibly the smoke trail is visible on the GOES sat shots for the right time...
start around this one: 08-Nov-2010 15:03
http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/goeswest-lzw/california/vis/

I'm not sure exactly when this 'event' started

[chump]

I've been out and about all day and didn't see or hear anything on the news until I minute ago on channel 7:
"It wasn't any threat and didn't involve a foreign military." That's all I need to know. Twits! (just kidding)

NBC news is says it's a contrail!

[Bruce Dazzling]

You'll never guess what Turner Classic Movies is showing right this minute.

[Nordic]

The "authorities" are now saying it's a jet contrail.

L.A.’s Mystery ‘Missile’ Is Probably a Jet

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11 ... bly-a-jet/

That mystery “missile” launched last night off of the coast of Los Angeles? It probably wasn’t a missile at all, several leading defense analysts say.

The various arms of the U.S. military scrambled this morning to explain the creepy footage, snapped by a CBS news helicopter, of what appeared to be a missile flying into the air, not far from Los Angeles. U.S. Strategic Command, Northern Command, Air Force Space Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, the Navy and the Missile Defense Agency were all left struggling to give an answer for what appeared to be a rogue ICBM. But to GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike, there’s an easy explanation: “It is obviously an airplane.”

“The aircraft is flying towards the observer; the air over the Pacific is clear, so the contrail is visible all the way to the horizon. This creates the optical illusion of a rocket flying up, rather than the actual situation of an airplane flying horizontally,” Pike tells Danger Room. “The object generating the contrail is moving too slowly to be a rocket; the contrail is not expanding as the ‘rocket’ gains ‘altitude’ — which would be the case as the exhaust plume expanding into less dense high altitude air.”

MIT astronomer Jonathan McDowell tells New Scientist pretty much the same thing. Although he does note that the Navy owns a missile target and launch facility at nearby San Nicolas Island.

This wouldn’t be the first time a plane was mistaken for a missile. On New Year’s Eve, an aircraft was photographed above San Clemente, California, looking eerily missile-esque. In December, 2008, there was a similar case of mistaken identity when a plane flew near the coastal town of Carmel.

“The short explanation is that we don’t see a lot of jet contrails head-on, especially from the vantage point of a helicopter. So, it looks like a missile to everyone else,” writes Danger Room alum (and New America Foundation analyst) Jeffrey Lewis. “But it probably isn’t.”

He adds, “That would explain why no one else in L.A. saw a missile launch other than the helicopter crew — or, rather, why everyone else from every other angle saw a typical jet contrail — and why [America's missile-warning system] didn’t light up like a Christmas Tree.”

Feel better? I don't. Look at some of the comments:

WHAT?! A jet contrail? Did you watch the friggin video? It was taken from 50 miles away and you could see the flame plume from the booster! There is some kind of staging event near in the last few seconds of the video too, and the exhaust trail does indeed get wider as the object climbs into the upper atmosphere (indicating nozzle expansion in the lower partial pressure). And yes, there *were* a lot of witnesses and photos taken from other vantage points which seem to show a vertical climb phase, and then a tip-over towards the West. Some of them from people I know personally (I live in the Los Angeles area). To them, this looked a lot like a BIG, solid-fuel missile headed outbound on a long-shot across the Pacific – very much like an SLBM event. The origin point seems to have been between two MOAs, in the middle of a commercial sea-lane and smack on the 100 fathom curve. The San Nicolas Island MOA is for SLAMs and RIM type tests – not SM2s or SLBMs, so they don’t have the equipment to track such tests anyhow.

While I could believe a lot of explanations from the Pentagon (an SM2ER test launch from an Aegis ship for instance) I don’t buy ‘jet contrail’ – that smacks too much of a ‘just a weather balloon’ answer.
Finally, the Navy doesn’t deny classified tests – their formal policy is simply to say “No comment”, not “Huh? Not us!”.
I want to look more closely at the other pictures and see what other information can be gleaned from them.
Oh; I doubt the US Early-Warning Detection Satellites watch for missile launches in the litoral approaches to Port of Los Angeles.
Posted by: zabazoya | 11/9/10 | 5:32 pm |



I live on the Coast of California, and have been a sky observer for the last 45 years. This is NOT a jet contrail. The perspective of the “jet” coming directly at the helo is bogus as well. Something strange happened out in the Channel Islands. Maybe we’ll find out in 5 years.
Posted by: Evil13rt | 11/9/10 | 5:50 pm |

Its either an experiment gone awry or some other nation trying to piss us off. The location and timing are too sensitive to be a coincidence.
Posted by: firepilot | 11/9/10 | 5:53 pm |

May be this plane.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/USA8 ... /PHNL/KPHX
Posted by: F_22 | 11/9/10 | 5:58 pm |

I lived in LA for 14 years including 12 right on the beach where I watched the sunset virtually every night. I have seen plenty of Vandenburg launches and jets flying east at sunset. I am an aerospace engineer of 36 years. This is not a jet, it is a rocket or missile.
Posted by: nerfball | 11/9/10 | 6:07 pm |

i live in LA, and i have seen many rockets fired from our north, vandenberg airforce base. i have seen many military jets and copters over the pacific, this was no jet. i saw this coming from about 30 miles west of santa monica, which would place it around nichols island, a military base used for testing….. this was no jet, and it was going way too fast…
http://toonheads.tv/view/857/survival-u ... tack-1951/
Posted by: sma7c | 11/9/10 | 6:13 pm |

Some basic geometry helps here. Let’s assume it was a plane contrail. Plane contrails fly parallel to the surface of the earth.
Watch the video. At 35 seconds into the tape, the plume has sunlight on both sides of the cone, while the sun is below the horizon.
That means the plume of smoke is backlit: the sun is behind it.
How can the sun be behind a plane contrail, if it is simultaneously below the horizon? It would be daylight, instead of twilight.
Well, there’s one option. The cone of smoke has its origin from the surface of the earth, due west of the camera’s location. The vertical climb stage has the sunlight shine through the other side of it, and the in the final rise, the sunlight shines from the right and underneath of it.
I’d attach sketches of the geometry at work for the lighting here, but I think this summarizes it.
Posted by: enzomedici | 11/9/10 | 6:19 pm |

Now now, we all know it’s a weather ballon. Don’t be silly.
Posted by: bball | 11/9/10 | 6:20 pm |

I dunno, I watch shuttle launches from my home about 60 miles from the Cape and that thing in the video is moving a lot slower than the shuttle appears to. Smaller missiles move even faster. I put my money on a jet contrail
Posted by: dwd | 11/9/10 | 6:23 pm |

Great job, Wired, for perpetuating what has all the earmarks of a cover story. In no way does this resemble a jet’s contrail, as numerous commenters have already done an excellent job of pointing out.
This really is the best misdirection I’ve heard since Tommy Lee Jones satirized the technique in Men in Black: “Swamp gas from a weather balloon
was trapped in a thermal pocket, and refracted the light from Venus.” Someone with credentials that appear to qualify them to draw such a conclusion chimes in, and suddenly it’s as if calmer heads have prevailed.
You Wired folks might be gullible enough to believe this, but I’m certainly not. To me, this is just one more example of modern journalism eschewing analysis of events in favor of dumb sychophancy. Had you engaged even a fraction of the critical thinking some commenters here have demonstrated, you’d have noted the plane “theory” as one opinion then balanced it with the opinions of those whose conclusions differ and why. Instead, you take the line of thinking hook, line, and sinker, and go out of your way to establish “common sense” reasons why it might be true, even going so far as to lend your endorsement of the opinion in the title of the article.
Regardless of what this turns out to be (should we ever find out), this treatment of the event was disingenuous at best.

[justdrew]

for anyone interested in the "it's a contrail' explanation, which is starting to seem more plausible... this place has a full write up on the idea, as well as examples of other contrails that achieve similar visual effects.
http://contrailscience.com/

the site was very slow to load a minute ago, but it eventually did.

and another source for video of it...
http://www.necn.com/11/09/10/Mysterious-missile-launched-off-Californ/landing_scitech.html?blockID=348833&feedID=4213

[Simulist]

L.A.’s Mystery ‘Missile’ Is Probably a Jet

No way. It's obviously swamp gas.

Or maybe the planet, Venus.

Or a mass hallucination.

Yeah. Yeah! That's the ticket...

[nathan28]

Okay, "jet contrail" on a rocket launch is the weakest explanation for something that doesn't really need an "official story", but ranks one anyway for the we-wish-we-were-PTB'ers in the edit staff at Gizmondo, of all time. Unfortunately, Kayne was not available, as he was too busy getting set up for a "let's be friends" appearance with George W. on The View this Thursday! Don't miss it!

[freemason9]

Well. I have two things.

(1) About one week ago, my wife mentioned to me that she saw what she believed were two rocket launches on the distant horizon. This was very early in the morning, silhouetted against the predawn horizon. She didn't see the rockets, but just the plumes. This was extremely strange, given that she was looking in the direction of southwestern Iowa.

(2) Obama is in Southeast Asia. The rocket was launched off the coast of California toward the west. This was not a planned U.S. military launch. This suggests that (a) it was an accidental launch, (b) it was an intentional but unplanned launch, possibly an attempted presidential assassination attempt by a rogue submariner (killing the president in a Muslim country), or (c) it was a launch of a ballistic submarine missile by a foreign nation as a show of force.

[nathan28]

L.A.’s Mystery ‘Missile’ Is Probably a Jet

No way. It's obviously swamp gas.

Or maybe the planet, Venus.

Or a mass hallucination.

Yeah. Yeah! That's the ticket...

One post is not enough to contain my frustroutragidiculousness here. "Probably a Jet" THEN WHY THE FUCK DID ANOTHER GODDAMN GOVERNMENT AGENCY CARRY A MISSILE LAUNCH ADVISORY PRIOR TO IT HAPPENING?

"JUST FUCKING WITH YOU," NY TIMES AND CNN EDIT STAFFS ANNOUCE
It's totally a missile

Two more stories botulism-canned 'mythbusters' responses like this and I will start attending 9/11 Truth and PrisonPlanet meet-up groups. Sorry, chemtrailheads, I'm not into huffing solvents, let me know when you all figure out a way who to cast orgonite from a resin that gives off marijuana, nitrous and amphetamine fumes.

[82_28]

I lived in LA for 14 years including 12 right on the beach where I watched the sunset virtually every night. I have seen plenty of Vandenburg launches and jets flying east at sunset. I am an aerospace engineer of 36 years. This is not a jet, it is a rocket or missile.
Posted by: nerfball | 11/9/10 | 6:07 pm |

This is key. I'm no "believer" in "chemtrails". But a few years ago, there was major activity in the PNW. All kinds of sunny days wound up getting washed out, as soon as you saw the first "chem" you knew the weather forecast was out of there. They wouldn't go away. In the years since, I haven't seen it like that around here. There would be one that would lay one down and it wasn't no contrail. It looked like chemicals. It would spread out and hover all day, it would color the sunlight a tinge of pink too. I've been keeping my eyes on the skies all that time too. It IS perfectly plausible that this is just a contrail from a jet caught at the right angle as the sun was setting. The sun really does accentuate these trails when the angle and hue is right. I really don't know.

I just wanna also point out that today is Carl Sagan's birthday as well.

Who launched the mystery missile over California?

By Melissa Bell

About 5 p.m. yesterday, a mystery missile launched off the coast of California. Southern California is a hotbed of military activity, with a Marine training ground and a huge Navy base, and yet no one really knows where the missile came from. The Navy, Air Force, Defense Department and North American Aerospace Defense Command have no explanation. The Pentagon is not sure where it came from.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command public affairs officer told NPR's Tom Gjelten that there is no indication of threat to the country. Phew. But they don't know who did it.

I'll humbly throw in some guesses:

It's the Marine Corps. It is the 235th birthday of the Marine Corps. tomorrow. The Marine Corps base camp in Southern California just happens to sit about 80 miles south of Los Angeles. Obviously, some excited reveler had been planning an ornate celebration for his gang and set off the fireworks (Marines use missiles as fireworks, right?) a couple days early.

It's the UFOs. Today marks Carl Sagan's birthday (I see a birthday conspiracy) and the guy was a huge believer in the search for extraterresterial life. Aliens decided to honor his anniversary by paying a quick visit.

It is Los Angeles we're talking about here. Perhaps Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan decided to get together for some afternoon tea.

Conan O'Brien went to great lengths to promote his show. And the missile does match his signature orange. Coincidence?

Truthfully, the whole thing is rather unsettling. My brother lives in Los Angeles. I'd like random missiles to not be going off in the vicinity of him and 9,862,048 other people. And so I hope for a rational explanation. Like the Sheen/Lohan tea party. Want to suggest other ideas?

Update: Reader Bohaha pointed me to this article in CBC News from January that talks about another mysterious object that was shot over Newfoundland. And the police are just as cagey and not knowing, but knowing!

"We confirmed that it was something," Sgt. Wayne Edgecombe told CBC News. But Edgecombe said he couldn't reveal what the police investigation uncovered.

There. Mystery solved. The Canadians did it.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-p ... missi.html

[ilyinternet]

"It could be a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine ... to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that," Ellsworth said." And China has not even sold and US bonds yet. So did China Dagong in turn retaliate earlier by downgrading the US?"

What if this wasn't one of ours?
Who else has this capability? China? Russia? Is this some sort of warning to Obama and/or Bernanke?

Where was it launched from?
Sea-launched, as near as we can tell - but surface or submarine? Given the commercial and recreational vessel traffic in that area, if this was ship-launched someone should have seen the launching vessel. Now, more than 12 hours later, there are no reports of anyone having it on radar. Note that private vessel radars are quite-capable of resolving a ship large enough to launch something like this from the distance to the horizon. My ship's radar was quite-capable of resolving a vessel of this size if low to the water in the 10-12 mile range (curvature of the earth) and if the vessel had significant superstructure above the water, even further. If this thing was submarine launched then it gets even more interesting.

Why the silence?
I find it very unlikely this was one of ours - unless it was a mistake. An intentional launch - even of a missile with a dummy "warhead" - this close to LA? No way. A malfunction could have sent that thing right into downtown before it could be destroyed, and even unarmed it would do a hell of a lot of damage. For this reason I do not believe this was an intentional US test.

Where were the NOTAMs if this was ours?
Missing, that's where. Multiple reports now that there were NO notices posted for aviators. No way in hell our military intentionally launches a missile without posting NOTAMs for the civilian air system before it happens. This means it either wasn't ours, or wasn't intentionally launched.

Where are the people who heard the notices on VHF Marine Radios and others?
I live less than 5 miles from Eglin AFB. They run military exercises all the time out in the gulf. I boat in the gulf. There are not only NOTAMs posted all the time on their activity, but there are also notices posted for mariners when they intend to do things out in the deep blue sea. The military comes up on VHF regularly and announces their intentions - and if you get too close by accident they are rather explicit in their warnings to you as well. I have heard these warnings and notices dozens of times. The point is this: if this was a military exercise there would be hundreds if not thousands of mariners who would have heard about it, and it would have been pointed out by now in the media.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=171727 via http://www.zerohedge.com/article/was-la ... rning-asia via http://cryptogon.com/?p=18674

[justdrew]

nathan28 - FYI that air warning, the NOTAM, is dated for the day after this event.

so the pics above are from the other video source I posted above. This shows the ?object? after it was separated from the long trail, it's hard to be sure if that trail goes up or not, but if it goes out to sea and is a plane contrail, it's huge, and should be visible on the satellite photos, other contrails appear on other sat images, but I've not seen a long contrail going out to the west. Then zooming in on the object (in the 3rd pic above) it sure seems triangular and to be coming from a point source, which isn't very normal for a contrail.

So - if it's something like an ICBM, it does seem to be moving predominantly... up?

I wish that second video source went for another few minutes to see what became of the object. Obviously people do have such video.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

This video might be useful for a comparison, though I'm guessing anybody's who's searched for "california missile video" will have seen it already. It's a Minuteman III test fire, from Vandenberg to a mocked up target base on the Marshall Islands.

a 6000 nautical mile, 28 minute journey across the Western Test Range from Central California to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Take particular note of the skills of the helicopter-based videographer: at 2 seconds after lauch the missile is moving at 3 times the speed of sound -- yet is perfectly captured going through a hole in the clouds.

The video is weird as hell, actually.

It gave me a bit of a sick feeling to see these ICBMs, albeit unarmed, coming down through the evening sky. They have very fat contrails, and at approximately 1.20 in the vid it looks to be shaped a lot like the object in Justdrew's pics above. They also, at times, appear to move quite slow, but it could be the video speed has been reduced:



If this more recent event was an accidental ICBM launch, even an unarmed one, we will have already heard just about all we're going to hear for the next twenty years at least.

[ilyinternet]

So - if it's something like an ICBM, it does seem to be moving predominantly... up?

Nice avatar