Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal. ?

Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

TXTBOOK said:
I hate it when people argue with people obviously more qualified but them, but consider the following:

1) The glow of the "booster" is amplified by the sunset, just like the rest of the sky?
2) It was too far south (I'm assuming you know the common airliner routes), but this "aircraft" was vectored around some of the activity from the two carrier's working on their respective quals?
3) DOD and FAA have been unable to confirm/deny this because they looked at the radar for something moving more or less vertically at a high speed (looking for a rocket). They were not looking for something moving horizontally, normally, and squawking (going with the airliner theory).
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All good things to consider. As for the booster glow, its color is too contrasting from the surrounding rest of the sky, to the point that it stands out for what it seemingly is: a booster of some type. John Pike states that rockets don't alter course like this one, and he'd be right: rockets don't. Missiles do, as they have guidance. There's only one carrier and I don't know where it exactly was. The other carrier was steaming south to go assist the Carnival cruise ship that had the fire off of Mexico and was out of the area. Even so, up at the high FL's the airliner would be at, it'd be out of the way vertically of basic carrier air wing operations anyways. As far as the DOD/FAA being able to confirm or not, apart from radar they could go to flightaware, etc; or just call out to the various ATC factilities "hey, do/did you have an aircraft out there at X time?" It would've been that easy, and again, something they'd definitely be SURE of before making a public statement that would send them down the road of either looking stupid or incompetent (ie- don't know whats going with their own forces, or missed something that another country's forces were doing).

It just doesn't add up. And as much as I hate to admit it, the reasonable answers lack supporting facts, and the tinfoil hat answers actually make some sense.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

double-conspiracy theory... it WAS ours. A planned launch to be blamed on an "unknown foreign power". The Powers That Be have sensed that popular opinion is turning against the Warfare part of the Welfare-Warfare state they have created and in an effort to perpetuate an atmosphere of Fear and Trembling have staged this whole incident.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

MikeD said:
It appears to have originated between Catalina Island and the Channel Islands, making your assertion correct. Assuming the helicopters video footage was looking generally west, the missile appears to being rising vertically and towards the northwest.
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Cruise missle with out of control azimuth? Decreasing OAT with altitude increase resulting in contrail. Contrail may not necessarily lead back to launch site.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

Roger said:
double-conspiracy theory... it WAS ours. A planned launch to be blamed on an "unknown foreign power". The Powers That Be have sensed that popular opinion is turning against the Warfare part of the Welfare-Warfare state they have created and in an effort to perpetuate an atmosphere of Fear and Trembling have staged this whole incident.
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Well done! I am honored to extend to you a hearty handshake and complementary one year supply of aluminum foil.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

Screaming_Emu said:
If so that is badass on their part. I always thought it would be cool to send an F-117 into North Korea in the middle of the night, have it do a touch and go, then brag about it later. Realistic...I doubt it, but certainly a better way to show off the size of our donger.
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That would be a cool entry in your logbook.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

MikeD said:
The Russians have missile boats, but they'd be off the Atlantic normally. The Chinese I could see in the Pacific.
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Both the Russians and Chinese have been regular spectators sitting 2-3 miles off VBG during launches for the last 25 years that I'm aware of. back then it wasn't uncommon to have a launch delayed while the hueys would go out and force these antenna laden foreign trawlers to move at least 3 miles offshore. So given VBG just had a launch Friday, it wouldn't be unrealistic to think foreign assets could be hanging around a few days later.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

KFMB in San Diego interviewed a reitred Navy captain and he said no doubt that it was a missile launch. He's basically saying the say thing as us. Who did it and where did it go? I know we still have SSBN's that have not neen converted to SSGNs. The question posed it if it was an accident, how did it get past the fail safes. It could have been a missile drill gone wrong. I know we have several sub guys one here that may be able to chime in depending on the security nature of the information. I still say China. They made their point clearly and will not speak anything of it publicly. I don't know why this isn't a bigger issue than it is? Somewhere in this counry thousands of people could have been vaporized and thousands more could have been radiated by the blast and resulting fallout plume.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

MikeD said:
Funny you mention. When I was based in Korea one day way back when, a buddy of mine and I launched in our A-10s to go be Forward Air Controllers over different parts of South Korea next to the DMZ. A US aircraft carrier had shown up off the east coast of South Korea, and its air wing wanted a little play time and fam time working with Korea-based units. They coordinated with us to meet, with 2 F/A-18s each, up near the DMZ and practice simulated air-ground ordnance employment. My buddy and I split after takeoff, him going to his Observation Point (OP) , and me to mine........each being a geographical landmark where the Hornets were supposed to meet us. My two Hornets show up in about 15 mins, and I work them for about another 15 minutes coordinating simulated airstrikes. They bingo out and RTB to their carrier. Just as Im about getting done with them, my partner calls up on interplane from his OP located about 20 miles away asking if my Hornets had shown up. I told him yeah, and they were preparing to leave. He said his never checked in. He attempted to call them on a few different freqs with no response. Our mission complete, and figuring his Hornets had just aborted their mission with no way to communicate that to us, we RTBd to our own base. Folllowing landing, there was brass waiting for the both of us and we were instructed to shutdown immediately and leave the postflight to other pilots to handle. We were shuffled to the Wing HQ and into the Colonel's office where we were immediately grilled on what happened? We told them one section of Hornets showed and the other didn't......why? Turns out, my buddy's section of Hornets departed a little late, had the wrong freq and had inputted the wrong coordinates in their INS. They flew past his OP, across the DMZ and about 45 miles into North Korea, attempting to contact my buddy. They hung around in North Korea for another 20 minutes attempting contact with him, then figuring that WE had likely aborted our own mission, they turned back south and slowly trucked back across the DMZ into South Korea and to their carrier. No North Koreans responded, no MiGs, no SAMs, nothing. They had South Korean radar controllers yelling warnings to them on guard, but never received them, etc. Never did find out what happened to that crew, but the NKs didn't take kindly to some of their own senior military leadership after that one.

So there's the story for the day.
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Badass is being able to tell a story like that in the same manner that if I were telling it would end "and then I ended up at Five Guys for the rest of my ready reserve"
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

It should be no surprise that a foreign sub could be off our coast. During the cold war Russian subs were off shore all the time if not daily and they were much, much closer than this guy. Russian subs were often found in the channel between Los Angeles and Catalina. Further south in deep water just outside San Diego Harbor. When I was in High School we would be on a fishing trip and see the USN choppers in a cluster dipping their sonar in the water. They were looking at something? When they found a sub the chopper would drop a hand grenade like device just to let the Russian sub know we knew he was there.

I'm sure someone here has read Blind Man's Bluff.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

fholbert said:
It should be no surprise that a foreign sub could be off our coast. During the cold war Russian subs were off shore all the time if not daily and they were much, much closer than this guy. Russian subs were often found in the channel between Los Angeles and Catalina. Further south in deep water just outside San Diego Harbor. When I was in High School we would be on a fishing trip and see the USN choppers in a cluster dipping their sonar in the water. They were looking at something? When they found a sub the chopper would drop a hand grenade like device just to let the Russian sub know we knew he was there.

I'm sure someone here has read Blind Man's Bluff.
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But none of them ever launched an SLBM (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) while they were skulking around off our coast either!;)
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

H46Bubba said:
But none of them ever launched an SLBM (Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile) while they were skulking around off our coast either!;)
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None that a news helicopter filmed anyway. Of course had this happened earlier in the day it would not have been noticed.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

TXTBOOK said:
3) DOD and FAA have been unable to confirm/deny this because they looked at the radar for something moving more or less vertically at a high speed (looking for a rocket). They were not looking for something moving horizontally, normally, and squawking (going with the airliner theory).
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Where did you get this info from?
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

I was looking at all the con trails the day before this happened. They were all to the west, and were staying there for a long time. I personally think it was an optical illusion because there is no video of this thing at a low altitude. Only video of it at higher altitudes, and it doesn't seem to be moving fast enough. And why would China want to provoke us into something? I think I am going to dismiss this as a contrail that was magnified by the angle at which we were looking at it through the atmosphere. Think about how big the sun get's when it's setting on the horizon compared to how big it is when it's up above at noon.

Do I know for sure it wasn't a missle. No. But can I dismiss it as a missle with some simple logic. Yes. It just doesn't make sense that a foriegn power would come off our shore and launch something away from us, then not say something to the effect of "yeah that was us, don't piss us off......OR ELSE!"
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

There are only a couple of possibilities:

Its ours
Its not

If its not ours then we'd know about it. If China was launching something off our shores, that'd be a political move not a tactical move, they'd be making a point, and you can bet your ass that it'd be all over Xinhua that the victorious people's navy <Connery Voice>sat of their coast and conducted missile drills</Connery Voice>. The only reason that China wouldn't admit it would be if it'd been an accidental launch, in which case, we'll find out pretty soon because if a foreign power screws up that bad, we're gonna tell everyone so that we can show how good we are.

If its ours we'd know about it except under one circumstance. It couldn't be an accidental launch on our part, because then we'd have had to tell other countries about the launch to keep them from panicking and launching their missiles at us. They'd invariably tell someone in an effort to make us look bad (especially the russians or the chinese, who we'd have to tell under the circumstances of an accidental launch). The only time that we wouldn't know what the launch was is when we're launching something so secret that acknowledging its very existence would be dangerous. If it was an unimportant payload, you could piggyback it on a GPS launch, or even lie and call a launch a GPS satellite launch. If it were a launch out to the test range at Kwajalein Atol, we'd know about it, no sense in denying a test, even if the specifics of the test are secret. If you deny the test and someone witnesses it, then you've got even more explaining to do, and you'll raise red flags. However, if it is a missile, then we're looking at something that they'd rather deny flat out than admit even has the potential to exist. Plus, with the "contrail" angle, they've already thrown up very plausible counter intelligence to try to downplay the importance of the launch, and in a couple weeks, no one will care.

Personally, if it is a missile (and the contrail theory is plausible in theory) then its either something new and spooky that we can easily deny because "hey, there's no way we could build that, must be a UFO," or something that we'd have to deny to maintain treaty obligations, etc. I think that the second option is more likely. I'd suspect that launching a secret "conventional" missile into space would be a launch that contained something like nuclear weapons, or space based systems that somehow violate existing statutes. Additionally, the launch could be in support of the X37 mission, or something along those lines. Space weaponry, or a kinetic kill vehicle has been the goal of the military for some time, now is as good a time as any to start in on that plan.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

Yes... like they're ever going to report this. Ladies and Gentlemen, we just test launched the X89, a super duper secret space weapon that can annaliate a whole country. Any questions?? This was something big, an expert in one of the stories provided here by a link said this was not sub launched because sub missiles are tiny.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

CNN just posted an explanation by a physicist saying that he believes after looking at the evidence that it can only be an airplane. He had valid points, except he never addresses the glow and more importantly if it were a contrail, shouldn't there be many more contrails from the other airplanes in the area? Not necessarily looking like that one, but just other contrails in general and in the video I could not see any other ones.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

mshunter said:
I think I am going to dismiss this as a contrail that was magnified by the angle at which we were looking at it through the atmosphere. Think about how big the sun get's when it's setting on the horizon compared to how big it is when it's up above at noon.
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The apparent magnification of the sun at the horizon is, in itself, an optical illusion.
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

But how messed-up would that be if another country's nuclear submarine when all Kursk a couple of miles off the L.A. coastline ... "awwwk-warrrd!" :)
 
Re: Mystery Missile or Jetliner Contrail over Southern Cal.

Socal321 said:
Yes... like they're ever going to report this. Ladies and Gentlemen, we just test launched the X89, a super duper secret space weapon that can annaliate a whole country. Any questions?? This was something big, an expert in one of the stories provided here by a link said this was not sub launched because sub missiles are tiny.
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That guy's smokink crack! A Titan II (which is what is loaded on our SSBNs) may not be the size of a Minuteman III, but it is by no means tiny. He may be talking about Tomahawks that are carrierd aboard SSGN's which are SSBN's that have been converted to vertically launch Tomahawk missiles instead of SLBM's.
 
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