Secret U.S. Test of Foreign Missile Might Explain Mysterious L.A. Contrail
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WASHINGTON -- The use of an obscure U.S. Navy facility at San Nicolas Island to secretly test foreign-made missiles is a possible, if remote, explanation for the appearance on Monday of a mysterious condensation trail in the sky just off the California coast, according to some aerospace experts (see GSN, Oct. 22).
The proximity of the event to the San Nicolas Island facility, though, has some civilian experts musing about the prospect that the U.S. government simply cannot -- or will not -- acknowledge a highly secretive missile launch.
"This [could be] where we bought something we don't want the world to know we bought," said one former government insider who asked not to be named in discussing a highly sensitive topic.
On at least one occasion in the past, the Defense Department has used San Nicolas -- an uninhabited land mass in California's Channel Islands -- for engineering evaluations of foreign missiles that the U.S. military seeks to better understand, experts told Global Security Newswire.
For example, the Pentagon several years ago secretly procured a number of Scud missiles and used them to test U.S. interceptor technologies, according to one specialist. The use of these missiles has since become public.
