[John S Mosby]

All valid as to who what and how. But I would seriously hesitate giving Crimson Tide as a remotely accurate representation of missile security and weapons clearance procedure or possiblility. This was one of our own boats, testing. If the NOTAMs was wrong, well, then some geek on the desk for NOTAMs is seriously toasted. But then the only thing you see flying in the video is an twin rotor helicopter either a CH46 or MH-47, both military type and most likely a video platform on range. It is also true that a detonation would have been noted by now, even if it was sent to one of our test atolls.

[Mr Inviso]

If it were an ARMED missile, everybody with a halfway decent seismograph would know.

I’m still voting it was an SLBM test of US origin, and the Pentagon people are just following the “neither confirm nor deny” routine. The twin-rotor helicopter being there (especially just ONE of them) tends to support that, it’s a range instrumentation platform.

Crimson Tide was a movie.. Hollyweird gets that stuff wrong all the time, and they bend stuff just to make the story more exciting. It’s not exciting to say “and then the submarine went back to port to get the communications suite fixed, and they adjusted the SIOP till they had a replacement” rather than “ZOMG, they almost nuked the planet and WE ALL COULDA DIED”. If that had been real, the lack of concurrence between the officers would have made it a no-launch situation. Story ends there.

I’m guessing miscommunication somewhere between the Navy and the FAA. I trust the FAA less.

[reed13]

That’s what I was thinking - except the sub is supposed to have confirmation that this notification was in place prior to launch. Now the helo there tells me that they were in contact to get visual confirmation of a clear range. So I’m leaning toward an incorrect notification.

The only thing is then the flailing statements from multiple sources don’t make sense - unless it’s just because it was such a routine thing that they didn’t know what to say when asked about it.