Posted on 11/09/2010 8:05:31 AM PST by Gennie
(CBS) A mysterious missile launch off the southern California coast was caught by CBS affiliate KCBS's cameras Monday night, and officials are staying tight-lipped over the nature of the projectile.
CBS station KFMB put in calls to the Navy and Air Force Monday night about the striking launch off the coast of Los Angeles, which was easily visible from the coast, but the military has said nothing about the launch.
KFMB showed video of the apparent missile to former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert Ellsworth, who is also a former Deputy Secretary of Defense, to get his thoughts.
Scroll down for KFMB video showing the launch.
Video here
"It's spectacular… It takes people's breath away," said Ellsworth, calling the projectile, "a big missile".
Magnificent images were captured by the KCBS news helicopter in L.A. around sunset Monday evening. The location of the missile was about 35 miles out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island.
A Navy spokesperson told KFMB it wasn't their missile. He said there was no Navy activity reported in the area Monday evening.
On Friday night, Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, launched a Delta II rocket, carrying an Italian satellite into orbit, but a sergeant at the base told KFMB there had been no launches since then.
Ellsworth urged American to wait for definitive answers to come from the military.
When asked, however, what he thought it might be, the former ambassador said it could possibly have been a missile test timed as a demonstration of American military might as President Obama tours Asia.
"It could be a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine … to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that," speculated Ellsworth.
Ellsworth said such tests were carried out in the Atlantic to demonstrate America's power to the Soviets, when there was a Soviet Union, but he doesn't believe an ICBM has previously been tested by the U.S. over the Pacific.
Officially, at least, the projectile remains a mystery missile.
Pentagon calls mystery missile ‘unexplained,’ cannot rule out threat
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2624435/posts
Well, then it’s obviously a threat, because they would know by now if it were an accident.
I was involved in a Naval exercise with Turkey back in 1994 or so. The USS SARATOGA accidentally launched two Sea Sparrow missiles into a Turkish ship’s bridge, killing teh Skipper and several others. An immediate flash message went out and the world knew about it.
It would be interesting to read the message traffic.
That is *tiny* missile compared to the missile launched off-shore yesterday...
There are a lot of different Black Brant configurations.
The only other thought would be a test of some sort of antimissile laser or other thing that attacks the missile in boost phase, but there’s no big ol’ terminal explosion cloud where the missile comes apart and sprays itself across the landscape.
The Airborne Laser failed it's last test on Oct 21 against a Black Brant fired from San Nicolas, and also failed a test on September 1, and from what I know of the program I'd expect it to keep failing.
There's enormous pressure on them to have a success to keep it from being canceled completely, which is very close to happening; I don't think it would be implausible to test again only 20 days later, but of course you'd expect the NOTAMS to be out, the USN to know about it, etc.
more than likely laughing their asses off....
19 hours in??? We don’t know what it was or where it went. WTF is the media???? They should be on this like stink on manure.
The video says about 35 miles off the coast.
If it was a US missile, it was a definite goof-up.
“If it was non-US and you wanted to stick a thumb in our eye, wouldn’t you aim the thing into a known test range?”
That’s a thought — Chinese subtlety. They don’t necessarily want to start a cold war and world wide economic panic. So they give us an easy excuse? Possibly? [And still get their point across.] But it will be hard to dispute the US military if they come out and say it was a communication error, human error, computer error, etc.
What has civilian ATC got to do with the Pentagon or any other branch of the military? The investigation is in the hand of the military and the Pentagon. ATC will provide that information to the military and it will be the military that collate it and make the final announcement.
Waiting for Tommy to point out there’s a landing strip 35 miles off the coast.
Not unless the missile was equipped with a transponder. You have to realize modern air traffic control radar is more of a cooperative link, not the traditional "skin paint" radar that receives an echo directly. Aircraft transmit codes when queried by the radar that ID them, altitude, speed, etc. The radar itself is rather weak.
Thank you, FRiend.
So the aircraft had its afterburners on and was rolling into a ballistic trajectory?
I have seen people say that a contrail looked like a tornado too. Some people will believe just about anything.
In my America it’s not possible the Pentagon doesnt know what this is...
Exactly! It would be absurd that the military wouldn’t know what this is.
Interesting that a (former?) military man would chime in here after 5 months of silence, to post about this issue. Hmmm...
Shhhhh you’ll throw em off! LOL
FoxNews Radio has been on this for hours.
from Galhran over at the Information Dissemination blog:
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Update From NORTHCOM on Mystery Contrail
I spoke with folks at NORTHCOM, and they intend to put out a press statement shortly that notes the contrail seen near Los Angeles last night is not a foreign military launched missile. At this time NORTHCOM cannot confirm what it is in the video.
A multi-agency process has begun to identify the contrail, and at this time they are still not sure. I will post the contents and link to the press statement to this post when their statement gets posted online.
Posted by Galrahn at 4:00 PM
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2010/11/update-from-northcom-on-mystery.html#disqus_thread
Best answer I’ve heard all day. And to those wondering all over this thread where it went into the ocean.
Text only. I don’t even load images.
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