Mystery 'Missile' Identified As US Airways Flight 808

sean.peters writes "The mystery missile discussed on Slashdot Tuesday? It was US Airways 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix. An amateur sleuth checked the time against airline schedules, then the following day, checked out a webcam that was trained in the appropriate direction. He found the exact same contrail at the time AWE808 was coming over. The author deals persuasively with a number of objections to his argument."

Comments

I don't care.

[bmo]

My explanation of "It's another water heater from Mythbusters" was far more entertaining.

--
BMO

Re:I don't care.

[snookerhog]

I assumed it was from the same stealth sub that crippled the Carnival cruise liner.

Re:I don't care.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane's Missiles and Rockets, examined the video for the Times of London and said he was left with little doubt.

"It's a solid propellant missile," he told the Times. "You can tell from the efflux [smoke]."

Re:I don't care.

[clarkkent09]

Experts are wrong sometimes. While the link in the article is slashdotted, her is a similar one that's pretty persuasive: http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/ Can your expert tell the difference between an actual aircraft contrail at sunset (taken on Dec 31st last year):

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Preview-20100119-154110.jpg

and what he thinks was a missile:

http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Mystery_Missile_Launch_Seen_off_Calif._Coast_-_CBS_News-20101109-073423.jpg

Here is an actual missile launch: http://www.air-and-space.com/20061214%20Camino%20Cielo/_BEL7403%20Delta-II%20NRO%20launch%20l.jpg

Re:I don't care.

[MozeeToby]

I've seen two, very slightly different, angles of the object and the orange light is only present in one of them. Seems to me that a rocket exhaust should be quite visible regardless of the angle, and that it's appearance/disappearance would make a reflection seem more likely. As for the contrail forming right on the object, if it is an airplane most of it's velocity is directly away from the camera. There could be a mile between the contrail and the plane and from that angle it would look like they were right next to each other.

Re:I don't care.

[peacefinder]

Regarding the motion, did you notice the rapid acceleration? The staging events? The motor burnout after a couple minutes?

No?

Well good, because they weren't there. These are all characteristics of big solid boosters. A shuttle SRB burns for around two minutes with no staging; a Trident for about 170 seconds, with two staging events. Any solid rocket will accelerate rapidly; it has more-or-less constant thrust while the vehicle mass drops quickly as its fuel is expended as exhaust.

The cameraman said he tracked this object for ten minutes. There is no solid booster anyone knows about that is big enough and slow enough to have been visible to him for that long.

Re:I don't care.

[peacefinder]

But you do apply the razor when evaluating whether or not someone is actively concealing data.

There were hundreds of thousands of digital cameras in range of this event, and there's not one image from another angle that clearly shows a rocket launch instead of an aircraft contrail which has been posted to flickr. Is it simpler to think that all such images have been suppressed, or that there simply never were any?

Re:I don't care.

[Waffle Iron]

"It's a solid propellant missile," he told the Times. "You can tell from the efflux [smoke]."

So this raises the question: Who attached a solid rocket booster to US Airways flight 808, and more ominously, why?

No, no

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a part of the conspiracy. It's a cover-up, and I will argue it as such for decades to come. Because that's the only thing that makes sense.

Oops

[falldeaf]

I wonder if that UN Ambassador feels silly about his comment that it was probably a display of power aimed at asian nations... Why would the military perform a missile launch to beat their chest then deny that they did it? XD This news is going to be devastating to conspiracy theorists. No wait, denial and facts fuel that fire, nevermind.

Dag-nabbit.

[blair1q]

The picture fooled me, too.

And I ignored myself when I wondered why the plume wasn't all twisted up. Missile trails go through the different layers of atmosphere and pull in different directions. Like this:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/17/article-1214076-06756E3E000005DC-858_306x438.jpg

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[guru42101]

Watching the news a few days ago they had a video of it. They're sitting they're talking about how they don't know what it is. I'm watching the video with red and green alternating lights wondering if idiocracy is already here.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Sycraft-fu]

Depends on what you mean by air defense. If you mean an automated system that can shoot down ballistic missiles then no. There has been work on that off and on, that's what the whole "Star Wars" project is/was. However nothing operational at this point, or at least nothing that is admitted to (and that is the kind of system where publicly admitting it is useful).

In terms of defense against air attacks? Yes, tons. The US has a bunch of air bases all around its borders. The Air Force and Air National Guard operated bases in most states with fighters (F-16s and F-22s mostly) to deal with threats. In terms of tracking incoming craft, that is done on a continuous basis by massive radar installations. The PAVE PAWS radar arrays provide complete coverage of the US borders out to very long distances (like 3000km). All inbound craft are tracked and known.

So what's the deal here? Well the deal is nothing happened, that's what. There was nothing out of the ordinary so nobody noticed anything. All commercial flights are well known. They file flight plans, keep ground controllers appraised of their progress, and show up on civilian radar. See the radar you get at airports actually isn't normal radar. It doesn't track any object in the sky, it is Secondary Surveillance Radar. Rather what it is doing is looking for transponders. All commercial and private planes have to have one that say who they are. So what happens, more or less, is the radar says "Hi who are you?" and the plane responds "This is my callsign." Works great and makes tracking much easier, you don't have to have someone analyze the radar signals to tell if they are real returns or not (radar can get returns off of birds, air currents, etc if the power is high enough) and you can keep easy track of what everything is.

A plane that has an active transponder and a known flight plan is nothing out of the ordinary. There are thousands a day. So nobody takes any notice, that is shit working how it should. So when the military was asked "Did you do this?" they truthfully answered "No we didn't." When the FAA was asked "Did you see anything weird?" they again truthfully said "No we didn't." Because neither had seen anything weird, no evidence of any problems, they didn't go digging. The military isn't going to go all crazy because there is a picture of a contrail. The PAVE PAWS in Beale didn't see anything problematic, who gives a shit?

I am guessing IUSS was also clear of any unknown subs and so on.

Nobody noticed anything because there was nothing to notice, except visually, and neither the DOD or FAA check that because it isn't useful. Everything in terms of monitoring was fine. They may have opened an inquiry in to what happened so they could give people an answer, but that can take time since it isn't high priority and you want to give a correct answer. Or they may have just not given a shit since it was clearly just someone who'd snapped a picture of a jet and didn't know what it was. They knew it was NOT a missile as that would have been tracked.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[DerekLyons]

The picture fooled me, too.

Didn't fool me for a second - because it looked pretty much like a contrail and exactly nothing like a rocket launch.
 
What we have here is a classic case of sensationalism and the power of suggestion and preconceived notions over common sense and stopping to think. The news said it was a missile - and a lot of people became convinced it was a missile rather than asking themselves whether the news was right or not. Even a lot of otherwise intelligent people went along with that conclusion because it agreed with their anti-government/pro-government-conspiracy beliefs.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[EdIII]

Reading your well articulated post has had a quite calming affect. Your logical and reasoned argument is beginning melt away the conspiracy theory tension in my shoulders... and I think it is lowering my blood pressure.

I don't like it. Get the fuck out of here :)

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Sycraft-fu]

Seriously, the idiot content on Slashdot never ceases to amaze, especially for a site where the users value themselves as being smart geeks. A statement like that only makes you look like a colossal moron with regards to air defense, and to the events of 9/11 themselves.

The whole reason that worked as it did was precisely because it was a terrorist act, using civilian airliners. Nobody realized anything was wrong until it was too late. Why? Because they were supposed to be there. These were scheduled commercial flights, they were squawking idents, everything seemed fine. The US does not go around shooting down all commercial airline traffic, for good reason.

All that has absolutely nothing to do with air defense in terms of hostile craft coming in from outside the borders, which is what is begin talked about. If an airline enters US airspace and it isn't scheduled and/or isn't transmitting ident as it should, some fighters will come to meet it. Actually they meet it long before it gets to US airspace, when it got to US airspace would be when it would get shot down.

This happens all the time with Russian Bear bombers. In a silly "Our military penis is as big as your military penis," game, they send Bears over to the US coast. They are traced by PAVE PAWS, and F-16s fly up to escort them. They fly around, and then return home. Nothing comes of it because they aren't breaking any rules, however if they continued towards the US and breached US airspace, they'd get splashed (Bears are designed to carry nuclear weapons).

If the difference between that and 9/11 aren't apparent to you, well, then I don't know what to do to help you.

Re:Dag-nabbit.

[Sycraft-fu]

Stand behind it all you like, just proves you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. The original question was US air defense. I pointed out what air defense capability the US has, which is extensive and you can easily go and verify those claims. You then claim that a terrorist act shows that the US does not have air defense. That is a stupid statement.

Again, the reason it worked was because they didn't realize what was happening until too late. When the first tower was struck, everyone thought it was an accident. Accidents happen. It isn't like they called it to ground control and said "We are hijacking the plane, we've hijacked three others." When the second plane struck, people realized it was an attack. At that time the FAA ordered all flights to check in and land. The air force didn't start just shooting planes down left and right because they were CIVILIAN AIRLINES with people on them. They were able to determine that the other two had been hijacked. Too late for the one that hit the pentagon (it isn't clear if they figured it out before or after it hit). However for the final flight, it was determined it had been hijacked, and the order was given to shoot it down. The plane crashed before that could happen.

So seriously, if you are actually interested in the US's air defense capability, go research it. There's tons online, none of the broad information is classified. If you just think a single incident means there is no defense, well then you are an idiot. Even had it been a military failure, like say a hostile jet came in and attacked something, that STILL doesn't mean that there is no defense, it just means there was a failure.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm assuming you'll provide a decent, sane way to falsify your hypothesis? Or are you just going to reject every amount of data as possibly (sorry, I meant obviously) being tainted by THEM and part of your scary scary conspiracy?

Re:Slashdotted?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

No. They shut it down because they don't want us to know the truth - Google was ^%$_)&*(

NO CARRIER

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[MozeeToby]

Except that you can verify. You can look up the what time this flight left. You can use a bit of deductive reasoning, a little bit of knowledge about flight paths, and the publicly available Standard Instrument Departures for the given airport to figure out an approximate location and altitude that the plane would be at a given time. You can even, apparently, if the summary is accurate, look back at random webcams that were pointing in the right direction at the right time to see if the plane is there and leaving a contrail.

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

Re:Slashdotted?

[Anonymous Coward]

from blog.bahneman.com:

[Update: CBS2 in New York has a story about a similar event over NYC November 10]

I wonder if I'm the first to call it, the reported unexplained missile launch off the coast of California, was US Airways 808.

I did a lot of extrapolation of what flights could be at the right position (off the coast) at the right altitude (for contrail formation) and came down to two possibilities: UPS flight 902 (UPS902) or US Airways flight 808 (AWE808).

As I was researching tonight (24 hours later), I realized that today's AWE808 current position (at around 4:50pm) was almost the same as it was the day of the incident. I quickly pulled up a Newport Beach webcam and found tha (apparently) AWE808 was making an identical contrail, 24 hours later!

Picture 6.png

Compare the above webcam image to the KCBS footage:

Picture 12.png

The comparison is quite clear. A remarkably similar, less-hyped, contrail created by the same flight almost exactly 24 hours later!

So, based on that, and the flight track of AWE808 24 hours earlier, I believe the mysterious missile off the coast of California on November 8, 2010, was in fact the contrail of US Airways flight 808, a flight originating in Honolulu , HI (PHNL) and ending in Phoenix (KPHX).

Picture 7.png

I'm about 80% certain this is the right flight, though UPS902 is still a contender.

For some additional explanation of this non-event, take a look at the Contrail Science blog.

Other theories I've seen that explain this:

* Accidental missile launch
* Target for Airborne Anti-missle Laser Test
* Chinese-made Russian-designed ICBM
* Russian/Korean/American/Chinese "Show of strength" during Obama's tour of Asia
* Chemtrails
* Submarine-launched missile
* F-22

I respect that people will see what they want to see, particularly when it lines up with their interest. Military missile men will see a missile. Conspiracy fans will see a conspiracy. Military pilots will see an fighter jet. Myself? I'm an aviation photographer who also dabbles in weather and atmospheric phenomena. So I see a commercial airliner and its contrail, however, I also believe that this is an excellent example of Occam's Razor: "the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one."

There are a number of variables involved here:

* Altitude, exact time of day, direction and magnification of the KCBS news helicopter footage
* Direction and field of view of the Newport Beach webcam
* Exact positions of AWE808 or UPS902 when the video was made

With those variables nailed down, in conjunction with the sun angle, an expert should be able to pinpoint exactly, the trajectory of the object. Meteor experts extrapolate this kind of information on almost a daily basis in their tracking of meteor or satellite debris entering our atmosphere.

Some commonly commented concepts

(My responses to these are my opinion. I'm not a meteorologist or aerospace engineer).

- The "base" of the contrail is too wide, it should be narrower, like a road as it leads to the distance

You would naturally make that assumption. However, a contrail, at 39,000 feet is often subject to high winds. Depending on the velocity and direction, it can spread out contrails in a matter of minutes. (These contrails often turn into feathery cirrus clouds.) The contrail created at the distance where it appears to meet the horizon has had sufficient time to spread out with the wind. Remember, the distance as viewed through a zoom lens appears to be shorter due to an optical affect called "foreshortening".

- The object clearly had a bright, solid rocket-like engine flare

I attribute this to the sun reflecting off th

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Wonko the Sane]

So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?

So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.

Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.

Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a horizon and Phoenix is "EAST" of Hawaii.

Plane Finder

[Fartypants]

I was going to say this would been much easier if the Plane Finder AR iphone and android app wasn't labeled "an aid to terrorists" and removed from app stores, but it looks like you can still get it. There's a web version too at www.planefinder.net

Daylight Savings Change

[JoelWink]

I think one aspect of this story that hasn't been mentioned is the fact that daylight savings time kicked in the previous day. So, let's say this is a regular weekday flight that arrives in Phoenix in the early evening. After the November 7th "fall back" daylight savings time change, this flight, which may have passed over L.A. in bright daylight on Friday November 5th, is now illuminated on Monday November 8th with dramatic dusk lighting, resulting in a very different looking contrail.

No wonder the amateur got the story

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All those big name news outfits, CBS or FOX or what not, they are in the business of selling ad time. Digging and finding the truth costs money and produces uninteresting information. "Was there a mystery missile? Film at 11" collects eye-balls and sells ads. The amateur on the other hand does not have any incentive to hype the mystery and in fact has an incentive to debunk the myth. So he got it. Way to go.

Wish there are more such amateurs tracking the money and misinformation spread by everyone about politics.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[MozeeToby]

More likely, the FAA and DoD just aren't organized for this kind of investigation. If you had gotten on the phone with the FAA or an AFB while the thing was in the air and said "What the heck is that? It's tracking heading 270, at somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand feet", you would could have gotten the answer instantly: "identifies as flight 808 out of LA". As it is, it seems like no one was really interested in this until it got put on the news that night, well after it would beyond radar range. So far as I know, the airports and Air Force bases don't keep recordings of their radar tracks, they have no way to look back at what was happening at that time.

Re:space shuttle

[Beelzebud]

"I don't care who said it was a plane flight"

The battle cry of the uninformed conspiracy theorist...

Re:Server down, contrail explanation?

[swimin]

Sometimes, they merge very quickly into a single contrail, and his argument is that this is the case, and the angle at which the photo was shot at doesn't allow you to see them merge.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Obfuscant]

So far as I know, the airports and Air Force bases don't keep recordings of their radar tracks, they have no way to look back at what was happening at that time.

Air traffic control certainly does keep "tapes" of radar signals. Whether it is really a tape or some other digital recording is irrelevant. These tapes are often used to help locate missing aircraft. After a plane is reported missing they can often "replay the tape" and identify the point of last radar contact, even for non-transpondered or VFR targets.

This, of course, takes resources and time.

As for the GP who talks about using "Standard Instrument Depatures" for an airport to locate a plane, ummmm.... A SID for Honolulu (departure airport) will have no relevance to the location of any aircraft by the time it hits the west coast. SIDs apply only close to the airport (<30nm in most cases), until a plane gets onto one of the Victor or Juliette (low level and "jet route" high level) airways.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[CannonballHead]

It's not bizarre. It depends what you presume.

Presume the DoD *did* do it. Ok, then they should be able to get an answer out pretty quickly. You know, a cover story or whatever.

Assume they *didn't* do it. They obviously aren't paying much attention. Nobody on watch called the DoD and said "Hey, just want to let you know, a jet just left a contrail. Thought I'd notify you." So the DoD know they didn't do it, assume it is not a missile, and thus don't care. Why assign someone to look into it? They DID give a public answer, didn't they? Or at least, parts of the armed forces did: they denied it. That's an answer, isn't it? It's not necessarily up to them to investigate, quickly, every single jet contrail that someone says "ahhhh it's a missile launch!"

So if you presume the DoD didn't do it, then 36 hours isn't bad. Apparently, the media doesn't really care. Afterall, a "it was a jet flying a normal pathway" story isn't going to sell much. On the other hand, a "secret missile test [in broad daylight]" story is a good seller.

So maybe: the armed forces/DoD/Pentagon didn't do it. The news media don't care because they realize they didn't do it, and a story about a jet taking off isn't very interesting. So it only took 36 hours for a random guy to put all the pieces together and give a good answer.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[DiamondScar]

30 nanometers is pretty close

Re:I remain unconvinced

[toadlife]

I've never seen an airplane contrail look like that before.

I have. I live in Central CA, which is the "flyover country" of CA. You can see planes going between various West coast destinations every few minutes. When a plane is coming directly towards you, the curvature of the sky and the altitude of the plane make it appear that the plane is shooting straight up. It's an optical illusion.

I've seen contrails that look exactly like the "missile" in question, as they were being created.

I've also seen actual missile tests that originated from the coast, and they sure as hell didn't look like that.

Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence

[Beelzebud]

Do the media and government lie? Of course they do, I'm no fool. However that does not mean that they lie about EVERYTHING, and it does not mean this wasn't just an airplane. The camera operator tracked the object for ten entire minutes. If it's a missile, it's the slowest moving missile, ever.

Why should have it been easy to check on?

[Sycraft-fu]

Do you know how the radars track things? Do you know how the data is stored an analyzed? Do you know what procedures are in place for answering civilian inquiries on this? If you don't know, and it is clear you don't, then why should it be "easy"?

What you are doing more or less is arguing from ignorance, you are doing the same shit stupid managers to do IT and developers all over: "I don't understand how this works so I assume it is easy, and I get mad that you cannot deliver it to me easily and quickly." You know fuck-all about what you are talking about, so you just assume it should be "easy" and that they are either incompetent or evil because they won't just pop off an answer straight away.

And, sadly enough

[Sycraft-fu]

Some very reasoned (and funny) commentary on it came from The Daily Show (sad because we shouldn't have to have a comedy show that is better than real news). The CBS chopper filmed the plane for 10 minutes. As Jon Stewart notes ballistic missiles go really fast, like 9,000 miles an hour. That's rather the point of missiles, they go really fast. Even little ones like Sidewinders are extremely high speed but the big ones like SLBMs are just amazingly fast. If they weren't, well they'd be real easy to shoot down, which would kinda eliminate their usefulness. Also there'd be plenty of time to have warning and deal with them.

If this was a big missile it was the slowest missile in history.