Missile Launch off California Coast

[AZRedhawk44]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/09/national/main7036716.shtml

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2qKMchcgzk

Top story on Drudge right now.

Navy doesn't know, Air Force doesn't know.  35 miles off of CA coast.  Big ICBM sucker.

Irksome.  Demonstrations of might usually end up being claimed by the country that performed them.

Theories?

Mine is:  We're screwed.  Putin, after driving F1 race cars, decided to test fire an ICBM just off the coast of the US.  Not only did he order the firing, he was on-board the sub and pushed the launch button.  He scuba'ed in after being parachuted into the ocean, wrestled a kraken while swimming to the sub, came in through an underwater airlock at night, launched the missile and then returned to his secret Cobra Commander underwater superbase.

[Marnoot]

I'd just add quotes around "doesn't know" for the military. I'd guess they do, as in it was probably a test of something.

[GigaBuist]

Uh, what's the last known location of RevDisk?

[Jocassee]

Uh, what's the last known location of RevDisk?

An excellent question.

Revdisk, please call your office...

[griz]

I did it, but please don't tell anybody.  The Navy doesn't know I borrowed the sub.

[lupinus]

What show of force would it be fore us to launch a dummy ICBM?

We know we can do it, the world knows we can do it, the world knows we have operational and functional ICBM's. So what showing of force would it be for us to do something everyone knows we can do? No one even questions that we can do such.

100k sets of boots show up ready to invade in a few hours? That's a projection of force, not firing off a dummy missile when everyone knows and agrees we can do so.

My guess is someone is getting big for their britches and the admin and military want to keep it quite, or someone somewhere pulled an "Oops, wrong button". Either way, something some where screwed up and they want to keep it quite.

If it was actually some sort of showing of force, it's a pretty stupid one.

[roo_ster]

If it was actually some sort of showing of force, it's a pretty stupid one.

Only if it was an American show of force.

If it was from a Chinese missile sub, it would be quite the demonstration:
1. Evade our patrols, if any, along the Pacific coast
2. Get REALLY close to a major metro area
3. Light off a big *expletive deleted*ss missile, no need for great accuracy that close to LA

[AZRedhawk44]

Seriously, this is creeping me out.

If it were some sort of black hat Air Force / Navy / NASA / Boeing joint project for a new type of military space payload, I could understand denials and such.  They normally end up making the wording of any inquiries in such a way that you can tell there's more to tell you... but they don't want to tell you.

The wording here, however, is completely impotent and caught with their pants down.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/09/national/main7037857.shtml?tag=topnews

"Nobody within the Department of Defense that we've reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is, where it came from," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said. "So far, we've come up empty with any explanation."

Lapan said officials are talking to the Air Force, Navy and NORAD as well as civilian authorities who control and monitor air space.

"Right now, all indications are that there was not (Department of Defense) involvement in this," Lapan said, adding that some object might have been launched by a private company.

There's still a LITTLE bit of wiggle room in what he said, as evidenced by the added italics by me...

But for NORAD to be caught flat-footed by an ICBM off our coast, and the Navy to be caught flat-footed by a launch platform off our coast, it's quite disheartening.  Perhaps we need fewer Aegis destroyers and Patriot systems in the Middle East, and a few more over here protecting us.

It just doesn't make sense for the US to launch ICBM's as tests.

Perhaps this missile was a threat to the sub crew somehow and was intentionally launched by the sub?  Radiation or chem/bio leak from it?  Accidental chemical contamination?  Flinging it into the deep Pacific could be some sort of SOP rather than risking the entire submarine.

[280plus]

Ellsworth said such tests were carried out in the Atlantic to demonstrate America's power to the Soviets, when there was a Soviet Union, but he doesn't believe an ICBM has previously been tested by the U.S. over the Pacific

.There was ~1979, I was there, I have the picture.  

[AZRedhawk44]

Where's our Leatherneck?  I bet he has some ideas.

[Harold Tuttle]

ET phone home

[lupinus]

Only if it was an American show of force.

If it was from a Chinese missile sub, it would be quite the demonstration:
1. Evade our patrols, if any, along the Pacific coast
2. Get REALLY close to a major metro area
3. Light off a big *expletive deleted*ss missile, no need for great accuracy that close to LA

I meant as a show of force by America. If it was someone else, it would indeed be a hell of a showing.

[RevDisk]

Uh, what's the last known location of RevDisk?

An excellent question.

Revdisk, please call your office...

Uhm.  You can't prove anything?

[CNYCacher]

Question:

Who, aside from news media people, are actually claiming that this was, in fact, a missile?

I realize there is a video, but I don't see any evidence of scale.

How do we know it isn't a large model rocket?  Do we have any hard information about how big it was, how fast it was going, etc?

[Apple a Day]

Some scenarios off the top of my head:

1. Missle malfunction. One of our boats had a techical oopsy. Badbadbad news considering that if it WAS then we'd have to take the sub missles offline until we inspected and figured out how to fix it so it didn't happen again. It would also mean that there's a warhead out there somewhere waiting to be picked up. Watch for the scurry of military guys trying to recover the warhead.
2. Failed terrorism attempt. A)Some foreign wack jobs put together a missle mission and screwed it up. Missle was meant for L.A. and it never made it. Wait for video covering the mistake saying, "We just sent a message to the United Satans of America by launching a missle on your front steps! The next one will land on your slutty, infidel mom!"  or B)Some nutcase WITHIN the U.S. military managed to get aboard a nuke boat, hack into the system, commandeer a missle, and launch it by his lonesome. He tried to re-target the missle but either made a mistake or - like the shooter taking potshots at the Marine memorial in D.C. - wanted to scare folks rather than run up a body count. Scary either way.
3. Russia did it as an under-the-table morale building stunt for the hardcore military staff. Putin will look darned smug for a while but nothing else will be said. Meanwhile he'll be getting his general thugs in order for a possible big move somewhere a few months down the line. God help us.
4. China did it as a warning before making a move on Taiwan telling us to stay out of the way. God help us.

    Those are a few that come to mind.

[lee n. field]

But for NORAD to be caught flat-footed by an ICBM off our coast, and the Navy to be caught flat-footed by a launch platform off our coast, it's quite disheartening.

I think we might have just moved into interesting times.

[AZRedhawk44]

Question:

Who, aside from news media people, are actually claiming that this was, in fact, a missile?

I realize there is a video, but I don't see any evidence of scale.

How do we know it isn't a large model rocket?  Do we have any hard information about how big it was, how fast it was going, etc?

It breached the cloud cover several thousand feet up.  In the video at the bottom of this link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/09/national/main7037857.shtml?tag=topnews

A commercial aircraft flies in the foreground with the missile contrail in the background.  The camera perspective shifts as the helicopter moves, showing us that the contrail is quite a distance in the background, yet the missile left an exhaust that is apparently the same size as the jet yet significantly further in the background of the video.

That makes the contrail 25-50 times wider than the length of an aircraft, since the helicopter is probably at least a mile out of the flight path of the landing aircraft and the launch is supposedly 35 miles off the coast.  Assuming the craft is a 727/757 class aircraft with a length of about 150 feet and the distance from the camera to the plane is 2 miles and the distance from the camera to the plume is 50 miles, then the plume would be 25 times as wide as the aircraft (25*150ft = 3750 feet, a little over half a mile thick).

Can an ICBM leave a contrail that expands to 3000 feet across?

[roo_ster]

Some tangential, but significant commentary:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/252865/keeping-eye-china-and-americas-naval-strength-alvin-s-felzenberg

[Ben]

I just called PLEAD Control's recorded public line to mariners. There's ops going on 0600-1800 in the Test Range today, which includes the area the missile is reported to have launched from.

[AJ Dual]

It's ours. NORAD did not go to alert, nor did anyone else. Our EW systems, satellites etc. radars... something not plugged into the critical systems beforehand would have us skipping DEFCON levels like hopscotch.

FAA restrictions are in effect all through to December for Kawejilan Atol, where these things usually land, or other rockets get shot from to intercept. The FAA restriction for the launch area started TODAY, AFTER the launch, which is damn weird. OTOH, I'd figure the Navy has the ability to just find an acceptable hole in the air traffic and just "punch the button when ready". They don't issue pre-made airspace restrictions for actual WARS either.

But the DoD/Pentagon playing dumb is damn peculiar. "A scheduled test, no further comment at this time." would more than suffice.

Saying they don't know, while obviously not true, is just off the wall, because it leaves things open to speculation that it was a Chinese/Russian or NK "demonstration" or warning, even when the most cursory examination gives you several reasons why this is not the case and it's a planned U.S. test of some sort. An "oops" from the guy dropping his mop on some ship, or a boat trying to drill, and actually firing a missile, just not going to happen IMO, even if it's a tactical system, (the contrail says STRATEGIC to me...) the bigger stuff is two key, or lots of targeting, tracking, battle information systems all being manned at once to fire the bigger stuff off.

There's not exactly just "one button" for these things. Or if there is, people, computers, and software sytems all over the sub/ship are also doing their thing in concert to make that one button "hot".

Just what they're up to by playing dumb is what's strange, that's all. Could be something as dumb/embarrassing as some of the memos, press releases, and whatnot being a day off due to clerical SNAFU's.  

I just called PLEAD Control's recorded public line to mariners. There's ops going on 0600-1800 in the Test Range today, which includes the area the missile is reported to have launched from.

The FAA NOTAM for today roughly lines up with this, (if I'm calculating zulu time right) but I can't find anything for YESTERDAY when this launch happened. http://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov (leave it to fed.gov to let their security cert expire..   )

Is there a PLEAD warning for yesterday when the launch happened?

[vaskidmark]

An excellent question.

Revdisk, please call your office...



Uhm.  You can't prove anything?

That should have been posted as a statement - you know, with the "period, end, stop" thinggy at the end and all.

As a question, it is more of a challenge.  And you know this crowd and challenges.

So - just perzackly were you at 2317 hours yesterday?

stay safe.

[Ben]

Is there a PLEAD warning for yesterday when the launch happened?

I dunno. I generally only call them on days we're gonna fly in the range. The public PLEAD info is refreshed daily. I didn't catch that this happened yesterday. I just saw the topic and assumed it was today. I didn't see anything on local news yesterday.

[Nick1911]

This is interesting.  Dont know what all it means, but several internet commentary people seem to think it's relevant.

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

[Angel Eyes]

John Pike of globalsecurity.org claims it's an aircraft contrail:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/09/california.contrails/index.html?iref=NS1

I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable to say if he's right.

[sanglant]

i know what's up, oBAM!o done went and gave jihad johnny one a dem der nukuler subs.






we is in for worlds o' hurt now.










  ,,,, but really WTF???