Amazing Interview: Air Force General says "Sub Launched Missile, 100% Certain"

Fox News Interview with Air Force General Tom McInerney | November 14th 2010 | Fox News Hannity Interview

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Hannity was surprised to hear a famous ex Air Force General tell him “That Is A Missile, Shot From A Submarine!” I quote retired Air Force Lieutenant General Tom McInerney (ex commander of 11th Air Force in Alaska) “I spent 35 years flying fighters, and you can see the guidance system kick in, I have watched that film 10 times, I am absolutely certain that that is not an aircraft, but a sub launch ICBM missile!!!” See the video and judge his words for yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LivRJOWrcpA&feature=player_embedded#! I will next post a clickable link.

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Since so much of this thread is just a few people over and over, here are a few more comments from the CBS site:

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Looks like and feels like a submarine (from a foreign nation or even US) firing cruise missile (most likely rocket assist powered), not ballistic, to show vulnerability or to test defenses. If shielded with radar absorbent materials device would not appear on radar.

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Not at that angle of ascension. As a former naval aviator I completely disagree. The angle of attack is way too high, all you have to do is look at the starting point near the horizon and you can clearly see it’s climbing and moving away from the coast.

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That’s a trident missile fired from a sub. It can’t be a Tomahawk either because the trail is much too large. If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. No military ship around, so it must be a sub.

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Not likely as the video shows what appears to be a fast moving object flying away from the point of origin, in this case away from camera. Most likley it is a private atmospheric measuring device that was launched by a private company.

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The problem with the jet contrail theory is that jets have been flying in and out of LAX for over half a century, and this is the first and only one that looked like this.

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Doc Sharp
Well, I’m a pilot and I say you have no clue what you’re talking about. Growing up on the space coast of Florida, I’ve seen my share of missile launches and that, Mr. Pilot is a missile launch.

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Peter
Amen to the missile launch. We can speculate all day and come up with umpteen gazillion theories as to what it was but until someone actually comes forward, while walking the beach, and has footage it will remain a mystery. Like most of you I say it was associated with the military and certainly no commercial airliner. If the Shuttle took off from Catalina island, the military would probably say it was a weather balloon

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Actually there was nothing in the sky at all. This is just a situation of collective hysteria over some unusual cloud formation.
Go back to your comfort zones. Who cares anyway. Like truth matters anymore.

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This vapor trail was visible at sunset last night from Santa Monica. It was about 20 miles north of Catalina Island. It was quite a smear on the horizon. I often watch the sunset there and planes don’t leave this heavy of an imprint. And their trails are in the sky and not leading down to the ocean.
It wouldn’t be so hard to believe that a foreign submarine fired off something. It wouldn’t be the first time a submarine got close to the American coast. I hope this is being looked into.,

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That was a ballistic missile shot from a subamrine in the Pacific Ocean! I hope One of the arm forces lie and tell us it was one of theirs. If not we’re in trouble, buddy!

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A ballistic missle in broad daylight? Someone was flexing their muscles and it’s pretty obvious that they wanted us to see it. I would say Chinese. A message to Obama.

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Update: Karl Denninger muses whether the missile was even an American one:

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.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/was-last-nights-launch-rogue-missle-warning-asia

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2010/11/09/pentagon-cant-explain-missile-off-california/

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[kanawa]

I haven’t seen either the post or the article you’ve mentioned.
Do you have a link to them handy?

[TigersEye]

Uhhh, yeah, right.

[RinaseaofDs]

Who are you, are rocket scientist?

[TigersEye]

Absolutely right. I couldn’t agree more and can’t believe so many people have put their confidence in the DoD/Pentagon/gov statement.

[D-fendr]

So, bottom line, you don't have any citations or references to support your assertions concerning the timing.

The only CBS Early Show I can find on the story is "Military Says Missile-Like Object Wasn't Missile" on Nov. 10.

The only portion of this story concerning the duration of the event is (referring to the cameraman):

He zoomed his camera in and stayed on it for about 10 minutes. To him it looked like an incoming missile.

Video.

Related story.

[TigersEye]

My question was: What is your cite for your assertions of how long he video taped it, what the timing on the video tape is and the object’s apparent speed?

That's what I have been asking too. He said he observed it for ten minutes but he never said he taped it for ten minutes. Neither he nor the talking heads at his news station said anything about where in his total tape the footage they aired was clipped from. Although the earliest footage shown shows about half of the eventual total length of the plume and the latest footage shows a degraded contrail with no vehicle in it.

The one part of the video that has a frame of reference for its true speed is where the huey helicopter flies perpendicular to the path of the object.

[TigersEye]

Sorry you can't make the video run.

So am I. I have tried everything to fix this glitch. I can't use the search function on Youtube anymore because of it so that is limiting my research abilities too. Thanks for your help. I will try to find the CBS nationally broadcast interview another way.

[D-fendr]

I honestly think this cameraman knew EXACTLY what it was

In the interview clip that TigersEye linked to several times recently, he said he saw it a week ago, but this one was more spectacular so he informed the station he saw it again and video taped it... I.e, it's "uniqueness" was not that unique.

[D-fendr]

He said he observed it for ten minutes but he never said he taped it for ten minutes.

Where's this from?

[TigersEye]

The conclusion is that if this were a rocket it'd be nearly a MILE WIDE ~ which is improbable. Therefore, the analysis suggesting this to be an airplane related event is probably right.

You calculated that on the presumption that it was a vertical rocket plume in a relatively close position right? At a maximum about 100 miles away?

If it were a contrail of an airplane at 30k feet and the far end of it appeared to come down to the horizon because of perspective wouldn't that far end be much much further away than 100 miles? Wouldn't that also mean that a given width in the camera frame would calculate out to be much much wider than the same width in the frame of an object only 35-100 miles away?

I don't think I have ever seen an airplane contrail stretch out a mile wide, much less far wider than that, and not disappear entirely. By the time they get a few hundred feet wide they get pretty thin and wispy.

[muawiyah]

The dilemma to the analyst is that somehow he has to take ANY rocket plume all the way down to the launch site.

This one starts a long way in the air ~ it seems to begin beyond the horizon (quote from the guy who did the film).

The dilemma for the proponent is he has to 'splain how this whole picture came together in a few seconds ~ and that includes a nearly mile wide plume at the horizon (from 35 to 62 miles away given camera elevation ~ aperture width is a separate issue but can be dealt with by reference to degrees of horizon seen by the camera)

(You can check mileage, etc. by simply picking up a map and drawing circles with the helicopter at the center. Match the picture with the landscape at that various corresponding points within the picture ~ i used a different method ~ "estimation of maximums and minimums")

however great a plume from an aircraft might be, you have to create that plume from a rocket exhaust in seconds.

Still, the plumes from an aircraft are almost entirely very cold ice crystals at high altitude. This is above Everest.

They can disperse a long way before sublimation, so an aircraft can give you a very wide plume due to wind movements affecting it. You don't have that option with a rocket while it's still visible in launch phase since it moves so fast wind won't have had time to blow the plume apart, or make it look wider.

Some of the NASA pictures of airliner contrails from space are fantastic. They last a very long time and get quite large before they disappear.

[TigersEye]

Where's this from?

I was wrong Gil Leyvas didn't say anything about how long he taped or observed it in the interview he did with his own station. The only place I could find mention of it was in the following written story from ABC. It was the reporter's words not a quote.

Military Says Missile-Like Object Wasn't Missile (but, Times of London Expert Says...Missile)

"He zoomed his camera in and stayed on it for about 10 minutes. To him it looked like an incoming missile." (quoting reporter)

[muawiyah]

The photographer has a comparable video he did from a week earlier. That's what he said. But it wasn't as neat so he filmed this one.

It's pretty clear the contrail is being lighted from below by the Sun below the horizon. That's why there's so much red light.

BTW, no one reported a missile launch the week before either.

The cloud of exhaust vapor is clearly bending around the curve of the Earth along the track of the plane.

In the oldest parts the light getting to the camera has had to travel through more air ~ maybe 50 to 100 miles in fact ~ and this results in a degree of magnification ~ particularly as compared to the parts further East (the ones overhead as the plane is beginning its descent phase into Ontario airport East of LA).

There's no missile here ~ just an airplane.

[TigersEye]

They can disperse a long way before sublimation, so an aircraft can give you a very wide plume due to wind movements affecting it.

Not a mile wide without being extremely thin. You didn't address how wide an airplane contrail would be if it extended to the apparent horizon in the camera's view.

[muawiyah]

Just to remind you, he said it was "incoming" (which meant it was heading East, toward himself) and he said it was "going West", and he said "it was North West of Catalina", and a variety of other things, but more importantly he filmed the same event a week earlier at the same place!

I think we have two primary CBS interviews with this guy ~ apparently at the same time (one local and one network), and another interview with the LA Times, and then with a local paper.

I don't believe he is a good subject to interview, and I wonder about his celestial navigation capabilities ~ he definitely has trouble with East and West ~ more like he's trained to fly helicopters and use cameras, or was someone else flying?

I don't want to be under this guy when he crashes Fur Shur.

[TigersEye]

I have to make this my last post on the matter.

Good. You seem to have signed up solely to post on this subject and you have added absolutely nothing to the discussion.

[muawiyah]

How "long"? He started at Hawaii ~ this is approaching LA. In really clear air, light winds, heavy contrail? Could last a long time and really spread out.

I've seen them spread out truly vast distances. They're just ice crystals and they're pretty tough. Do a google.com search for "contrails". Flip the switch to "images". Go through the collection. Some of them are obviously more than a mile wide.

Most of the photos are taken of contrail formations close to the aircraft producing them though, but when I grew up in Flyover Country I could lay there in the lawn on a hot summer's day and see HUNDREDS of contrails ~ many as high as 35,000 feet. So how wide do you think they might have been?

The trick here is the APPARENT width of the contrail ~ going no further than the distance of the horizon, whether that's 62, 42, 35 or fewer miles. An Apparent width can be computed without reference to WIND.

[TigersEye]

Notice the bright orange line of clouds in your picture. The brighter one, the higher one. Now notice the distortion in the plume that corresponds with that line of clouds. That is a clear indication that the plume is passing upwards through the same strata of the atmosphere as those clouds occupy.

It would be the most amazing coincidence if that were a wind-distorted airplane contrail many thousands of feet higher than those low-level clouds. Also quite amazing that the contrail clearly appears in front of those clouds.

[Niteflyr]

I haven’t seen either the post or the article you’ve mentioned. Do you have a link to them handy?

I'm at work right now but can easily post again when I get home in a bit...or anyone else who saw these articles and posts can help out...I know Finny has seen them...