Jeff Head used the Cargo Vessel missile launch capability in his book series. The website below shows ships in specific areas of the world. We used this during the BOP spill. If I remember right there is a way to go back in time on this location site. Cannot find it now, but could not get it to work anyway when playing with it during the summer. Use World Map. Select the area near Los Angeles. There are only 157-158 ships there now. Most in ports. Most of those ships there live now off the coast have just been there within the past 12 hours or so. Would suspect if it was a cargo ship it would have launched under fog and probably on the out bound route. Unless of course a Cargo ship full of those missiles just docked in a So Cal port and may have had a mishap on the way in. But that sounds like an old 24 plot. If they have no clue however, they should at least be searching all docked ships that arrived last night.
Live Ship Maps
Thanks for the link and the ideas. I am not that worried about our mil knowing what it was and responding appropriately ... now that it has happened. Even if a foreign nation launched it it might be a good sign in regards to our reaction.
It was launched in international waters and took a course away from the CONUS. Assuming we have a defense against it and assuming it was spotted immediately then it follows that we assessed it as a non-threat and did nothing instead of revealing our capabilities.
I lean toward the speculation that it was ours but if it was, for instance, China's and they were probing our responses they learned little for certain. They might know from radio chatter whether we were on it or asleep at the wheel but it may be very difficult for them to ascertain why we didn't fire at it.
They can only guess that we have no capability to, are too slow on the trigger, have no will to respond, have constipation in the command structure or, as I laid out above, we had it dead in our sights and correctly called it no threat within seconds. I'd love to believe that last one but...