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Mystery Missile Launched Near LA
J. L. Tympanum writes "CBS News is reporting the launch of an unidentified missile off the coast of California. No one wants to take credit for it." The article has visuals taken from a CBS affiliate's helicopter, and a Navy spokesman said it wasn't theirs.
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e3gf3/a_missile_was_launched_off_the_california_coast/c14zqpm
NOTAM for LA. KZLA LOS ANGELES A2832/10 - THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS ARE REQUIRED DUE TO NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION ACTIVATION OF W537. IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY, ALL NON-PARTICIPATING PILOTS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID W537. IFR TRAFFIC UNDER ATC JURISDICTION SHOULD ANTICIPATE CLEARANCE AROUND W537 AND CAE 1176. CAE 1155 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1316 & CAE 1318 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1177 WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. W537 ACTIVE, CAE 1176 CLOSED. SURFACE - FL390, 09 NOV 20:00 2010 UNTIL 10 NOV 01:00 2010. CREATED: 08 NOV 20:52 2010
It's not even 8PM UTC on Nov 9th yet, how can it match 5 PM fucking yesterday? Good math there champ.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
You didn't do your homework.
The time is wrong, and the location is wrong.
The FAA has already denied publishing any notifications about this launch.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2010/11/09/exp.nr.mystery.launch.cnn?hpt=C2
PLEASE STOP POSTING THAT NOTAM. WRONG TIME. WRONG PLACE.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
USS Hartford May 2000 - February 2006
You don't understand how big the Pacific ocean is.
The only way that you stop an SSBN is to maintain a large fast attack fleet and track each and every one of them as they leave port and follow them until the return.
This brian has not seen the video, as it becomes immediately apparent that the perspective places the object going away from the viewers, and not travelling towards
I looked at the video. All we can tell from it is that the object is moving to upper right. It could be moving towards or away from our viewpoint, we don't have the perspective to tell. Originally, I too thought it was a rocket contrail, but it is consistent with jet contrails and there's satellite evidence that this could be a jet contrail.
1) The US has not ratified UNCOLS, it does not care what is considered international waters.
2) Even if the US has ratified it, military would be allowed "innocent passage" subject to local regulations. Launching an unannounced missile is neither innocent nor regulated.
3) The Channel Islands are not international waters, they are archipelagic waters. The location of this thing was even pinpointed by a damn news station, it's right next to Santa Barabara Island. Well within US territory.
4) The trajectory of a weapon is irrelevant. Are you perfectly fine with someone sneaking up behind you and firing a gun in the opposite direction? The trajectory never crossed you, therefore a crazy man with a gun is not a threat? Bull
5) If this was an unannounced demonstration by another country, there is no international convention that would prevent the US from destroying or attempting to capture the ship.
6) If this was an announced demonstration then the ship would have been refused passage due to its non-innocent nature, meaning there is still no international convention keeping it from being destroyed.
7) The premise of this being a demonstration is that it was meant to demonstrate the ability to evade detection (we already know people can hit us with missiles, who would bother to demonstrate that?). That is antithetical to actually launching a missile, which immediately reveals your location. Also, if you REALLY wanted to demonstrate your sneakiness by launching a missile, why use a big expensive rocket? Send up something short-range, cheap, and shiny. The message is the same.
It's a US Missile (or at least US affiliated, either private or an allied country) and the agency which launched it has not been revealed yet, I don't see any other feasible option.
Are we certain that this was a friendly missile, not e.g. a Chinese sub saying "look where we managed to drive this thing"?
China may be bold, but sub launching a missile within a few miles of major US cities and military installations is a quick way to nuclear annihilation.
That sort of action would have had even Denzel rushing to turn the second key.
Chinese sub simply popping up in US coastal waters would likely involve it being attacked. (Submarine warfare does not follow the same rules that surface naval warfare follows. If you are on a sub, even in 'peacetime' you are always under threat of being attacked)
The level of provocation that a Chinese sub launching a missile so close to major population centers? They wouldn't try it. It would surprise me if North Korea would try something so bone-headed. No way in hell it was China.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
it was not a missile.
http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/#more-440
it was a plane.
Seconded. As an engineer for various companies that do such things, I've witnessed launches from San Nicholas, from Vandenberg, Kwaj, Alaska and Hawaii. There are several things visually wrong with the snippets of video I've been able to find online:
1: The contrail is too "solid" looking. It lacks the crazy dispersion that a rising plume sees almost immediately as the launch vehicle passes thru different layers of the atmosphere. Winds move at different speeds and at different directions in the different layers, immediately shearing a rocket plume. Contrails, however, generally stay in the same layer, and remain continuous for much longer. Sometimes very long.
2: The lighting is too uniform. An ascending plume from a launch just after sunset shows a "rainbow" of colors from sunlight refracted through the atmosphere and from grazing incidence reflection from the ocean. This plume shows none of that.
3: Its moving far, far too slowly. Even a suborbital missile that will travel only 600 or so miles moves faster on ascent. They move startlingly fast across the sky.
These clues tell me that it was an aircraft moving horizontally, not a missile moving vertically. The perspectives involved with very long objects in the sky can be very deceiving. You can't trust your eyes.
No one is questioning the appellation "missile" -- the first question asked should be, "What was it?" -- not "Whose missile was it?"
I wager that within hours, NOAA or someone will release a satellite picture showing the plume as a lateral contrail originating from the West.
I can see the fnords!
I'd be modding you up if I hadn't already posted above.
People like ThePhish and DrugCheese are so certain that they can trust their eyes. But they're wrong. Our visual cortex is wired to parse perspective for things on a much smaller scale. Things on the scale of this object confuse the eye, and the mind. You can't trust your eyes in this situation.
For instance, these lines are all parallel lines, but they certainly don't look like it, and if you saw them in person you'd swear they were all originating from a point on the horizon... as if God were standing over there in all his glory. But they aren't.
I'm sorely disappointed that so many smart people on /. are failing to question the assumption that the object is a missile.
I can see the fnords!
Actually according to Wired, a jet plane from an unusual angle is the most likely explanation : http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/mystery-missile-is-probably-a-jet/ It also explains why happening near a crowded area, we only have two videos.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Former naval officer here. I think it's dubious that the water in the vicinity of the Channel Islands constitutes "archipelagic waters" for purposes of the law - I think the islands are too far apart - but you'd need a JAG to help you with that question. However, each of the Channel Islands, as part of the US, are entitled to its own 12 mile band of "territorial waters", which are also sovereign US territory, so if the launch took place within that zone, yeah, you're talking act of war there.
Also: while the US hasn't formally ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty (aka the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea - UNCLOS), it has signed it and every administration since then (including Ronald Reagan) have treated it as "customary international law" and have considered us to be bound by it. I can promise you through many years of my own at-sea experience that the USN thinks the UNCLOS is the law.
Finally: you did hit upon something important in your first paragraph. The law notwithstanding, if someone else's submarine really did do this, sure, we'd sink it. The reason is not that it's legal but that we could get away with it - when a submarine sinks, it's really hard to prove what happened, and being as how this took place right off LA we could certainly prevent China (or whoever) from investigating.
Bottom line: no way this was a foreign sub. The whole Navy would be a general quarters so fast it would make your head spin. Mullen, Roughhead, and likely a host of other admirals would be fired. Obama would have flown home from overseas. Etc, etc. This was just the Navy doing the stuff they do, and not wanting to talk about it.
Better video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GCgDKNEwyY
Actual explanation of the event:
http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-los-angeles/missile-launch-over-southern-california-explained
TL;DR: Was a jet airliner's contrail and the perfect upper-atmospheric moisture level + winds.
I'm sure what follows everything south of this post involves China, Iran, and Dr. Evil.....
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage