You left out the private party: CalTech students/October Sky rocket club kiddies, or Sir Richard Branson firing it as a ploy to spark interest in his Spaceship.
All of which are VERY unlikely, imho!
Yes I did....and the private rocket corporations in France, Japan, and India.
Those guys don't do ANYTHING without FAA NOTAMs and agreements with the DEPT of state. When the CAL Tech rocket geeks go out to the desert flats, they have a SATCOM phone talking to a missile alert officer in Russia "just in case". They have to get ALOT of approvals to launch anything close to exo-atmospheric.
/......and 35 miles is too damn close for amateurs in one of the busiest flight boxes in the world. Their would have been FAA NOTAMs a week before, and a State Department approval with other nuclear powers of any "research" or "experimental" or "enthusiast" missile of this size.
....doesn't pass the smell test with me. Im still betting on an SLBM, IRBM, SRBM, or ICBM on a container ship. That plumb was WAY to big to be an old "FROG" "Lance", or "Honest John-type" short range tactical missile. That thing was BIG. I wish the video showed a 1st stage separation....we can narrow down the missile type with the separation of stages.
Shep mentioned a few minutes ago a piece he was reading from an online magazine- the author said even if this WASN’T a national security problem- it’s fast becoming one. A missile is launched off the coast of LA into the PAcific and 20 hours later no military spokesman can tell us anything about it.
That doesn’t present a very good picture to us or the world.