Posted on 11/09/2010 8:05:31 AM PST by Gennie
(CBS) A mysterious missile launch off the southern California coast was caught by CBS affiliate KCBS's cameras Monday night, and officials are staying tight-lipped over the nature of the projectile.
CBS station KFMB put in calls to the Navy and Air Force Monday night about the striking launch off the coast of Los Angeles, which was easily visible from the coast, but the military has said nothing about the launch.
KFMB showed video of the apparent missile to former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert Ellsworth, who is also a former Deputy Secretary of Defense, to get his thoughts.
Scroll down for KFMB video showing the launch.
Video here
"It's spectacular
It takes people's breath away," said Ellsworth, calling the projectile, "a big missile".
Magnificent images were captured by the KCBS news helicopter in L.A. around sunset Monday evening. The location of the missile was about 35 miles out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island.
A Navy spokesperson told KFMB it wasn't their missile. He said there was no Navy activity reported in the area Monday evening.
On Friday night, Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, launched a Delta II rocket, carrying an Italian satellite into orbit, but a sergeant at the base told KFMB there had been no launches since then.
Ellsworth urged American to wait for definitive answers to come from the military.
When asked, however, what he thought it might be, the former ambassador said it could possibly have been a missile test timed as a demonstration of American military might as President Obama tours Asia.
"It could be a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine
to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that," speculated Ellsworth.
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.
Officially, at least, the projectile remains a mystery missile.
“It just seems there is alot going on that nobody knows alot about.”
Always. There were minor terror attacks all the time throughout the years, and failed attempts [thank God]. We must have a strong counter-terror team to have stopped many of them. But snipers are hard to catch. We had a sniper team attacking us shortly after 9-11. They put a hole in the trunk of a car and tore out the rear seat. One was the driver and the other was the sniper. They seemed to muffle or time their shots. Took months to find them. Hurt our local economy.
OldMissileer: That is a sub launched ballistic missile and it looks as if its trajectory was taking it toward Kwajalein Atoll where we target our western test launches.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2624382/posts?page=47#47
Yeah and without today’s technology having a video camera in our pockets at all times no one would have ever known. Any eye witnesses would have been dismissed like all the UFO’s in VA recently.
Looks like an SLBM test. The exhaust cloud trail looks just like the usual Trident ones.First, straight up, then tips slightly and goes in the target direction. It doesn’t have to be that the DoD messed up. Could be they notified the FAA and the FAA messed up the date/time. It’s not like the FAA is some large government bureaucracy or something. They NEVER mess up, do they?
And now, they are trying their best not to own up to the idea that they test such nasty things that close to the CA coast. Sorta like those cruise missiles that don’t fly overland to China Lake, etc. They also may want to keep things damped down to keep foreign lookie-loos away. It’s hard to tell what exact direction that thing is heading, but a launch from there toward Kwajalein would be about right. It’d be a close mirror to the Minuteman test-flights from Vandenberg.
If it were a foreign deal, the task force that is heading toward that disabled cruise ship would not be headed there at all. They’d be all over whatever launched it like flies on the manure wagon. The bases around there would be in full freak-out. There would be a stream of grey hulls leaving San Diego and airplanes (P3s) and helicopters all over it. A surface ship container-launch like the Iranians or NKs would try, you’d be seeing a ship surrounded and being boarded, or turned into a large smoking chunk of burning metal. A diesel-electric missile sub is possible, but pretty unlikely. And it’d be toast pretty quick, too.
Amateur launch? Not likely. The biggest guys in HPR were the Gates bros, and they don’t even fire that size stuff, and they don’t launch offshore and they sure as heck don’t violate FAA, ‘cause Federal prison isn’t fun.
Too big for an antiaircraft missile, except maybe one of the new big Standards, but there’s no handy Navy DDG or CG there that would have launched that.
It looks a little too big for a Black Brant, too, if they were doing a test using one of those.
The only other thought would be a test of some sort of antimissile laser or other thing that attacks the missile in boost phase, but there’s no big ol’ terminal explosion cloud where the missile comes apart and sprays itself across the landscape.
“They obviously dont” Um, our government lies to US all the time, from all the various branches. It is a fact of democrat leadership since they are a criminal enterprise and lie all the time. I’m sure the lying from folks like NORAD has connected some rationalization which is just enough to allow the conscience of the NORAD workers to remain at least foggy if not clear.
That is supposed to be classified.
I don't believe they can't tell us anything about it, just that they won't tell us anything about it. That leads to even stranger and more disturbing speculation by talking heads and the public at large. It seems like they'd want to avoid that, even if they had to lie to us. The fact that they're saying nothing is what's not adding up.
Great stuff! Have you seen the footage from December 2009 off the Californian coast? It that according to you another un-announced ballistic missile launch? Why isn’t the US military investigating that one?
http://contrailscience.com/a-problem-of-perspective-in-the-oc-new-years-eve-contrail/
Aircraft contrails can be misinterpreted. That is fact.
More significantly - that is not a contrail. It is the exhaust plume from a good sized solid fuel rocket motor. Big difference
Solid rocket motors are used on boosters that need to be stored for long periods of time and then launched on short notice with evidence of fueling to telegraph the launch.
They are typically used on modern ICBMS. If it’s really not ours, you can bet the Navy is using sniffers to determine the chemical composition signature of fuel left over from the plume.
We have the fuel and IR signatures of various countries boosters so we should know where it came from if we don’t already know.
Dude....... (face palm)
This whole event is disturbing for those that know this was a missile launch, as the Pentagon, even at this hour, denies any knowledge...
"OOPS...ahh sir we have a problem here..."
Money quote.
I can buy that explanation. Question is, why would the pentagon say they don’t have a clue if it was just a regular old boring test launch?? If it was non-US and you wanted to stick a thumb in our eye, wouldn’t you aim the thing into a known test range? Just to make sure no one thought you were really aiming for LA or Seattle or Denver?
False flag? We’ve been expecting something which included that possibility after the midterms.
Oh no, couldn’t be. Everything we see is real and it exactly how the government and it’s appendage the MSM reports it. Just look around, to believe otherwise is engaging in conspiracy theory, tin foil hat wear and Alex Jones insanity. (what Alex Jones says that is so crazy I have yet to determine, it seems Beck is exactly catching up to the things he’s been saying for years but I digress.)
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