the Horizon is 17 miles away but this launch was 35 miles from the coast. That means it (the SLBM) would already have been high in the sky before conventional coastal radar could see it.
Additionally, it was moving directly away from large radar centers that may have detected it for only a few moments at the tremendous speed it achieved soon after launch.
If it had been a jet airliner or cargo jet making a simple vapor trail incoming to US coastal airspace, the News Copter would have tracked it until it could clearly have been seen as a contrail arcing in its track to Denver, or to Chicago, or to Memphis, etc.
No innocent bystander on the coast would have had a clue that this occurred. It was by chance that the News helicopter was high enough in the sky to see clearly over the horizon with a telephoto lens large enough to capture what was present.
All through The Cold War, American forces and Soviet forces postured against each other and to a lesser extent the same happened with the Chinese. Why should anyone be surprised that a Chicom sub could launch a SLBM outside our Territorial waters with impunity. What could we do about? Nothing at all short of sinking the sub on the threat alone which is clearly an act of war.
Is 35 miles inside or outside our territorial waters ...?
The USA claims 24 contiguous miles as of 1999 according to what I was able to find. Before that, it was the old traditional 3 miles and then 12 miles.
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And that is exactly what happened (except, despite your sarcasm) the destination of the cargo plane was Ontario, CA.
The graphic I posted in #348 on this thread is MY (TXnMA, 10th FR anniversary: this Veterans day) handiwork. I worked with the raw materials (with full metadata included in the files).
I got the three "video vignettes" directly from the end of the CBS video that was released by NECN. Notice that there is considerable time overlap between the end of the video and the series of ten (300mm f/l maximum) still shots taken from Long Beach by Rick Warren. That means that Levyas and Warren were photographing the same object at the same time -- obviously over the CA coast, and not in outer space over the Pacific.
I have never seen source data to verify that "35 miles" figure that appeared in an early cBS graphic (you trust cBS?) .Can you validate the "35 miles" distance?
Nevertheless, how could that "missile" have taken so long to cover less than 35 miles -- and be in range of Rick Warren's D90 camera?
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Now, go ahead -- call me (TXnMA) a "government shill"...