Why did it have to be “rogue”?
It’s not like our goverment doesn’t have hardware they don’t talk about. I’d suspect it was something in that category. They were testing something new and it just happened to get caught, and their spokesmen had nothing but sausage in their hand when asked about it.
Gee.. a launch from a KNOWN test area, with a NOTAM scheduled (but possibly mis-scheduled). It doesn’t HAVE to be a foreign launch.
The simplest answer is usually correct, and the simplest answer here is our own guys launched something secret and are trying to mislead their way out of it.
Exactly. It was an ICBM - not a firecracker. You CAN'T "accidentally" "cook off" that level of missile. For reasons obvious to a 4th grader, the launch sequence is divided and divided again to require a team process, commanded by top officers with top clearance.
We fired it, and we did it on purpose.
What the purpose of such a massively witnessed, yet massively denied, launch was... is the real question. As is whether the goal of the mission succeeded, or failed - and why.
Actually, that is not a known test area.