Someone semingly launched a mysterious missile 35 miles off of the California coast last night — just west of Los Angeles and north of Catalina Island. But anyone in the military knows who did it, or what the hell the thing was, they haven’t told me yet.
“We’ve checked and confirmed — this is not associated with any Navy operations,” says sea service spokesman Lt. Myers Vasquez. Who knows, the thing might only look like a missile – but turn out to be something else.
“Several different offices are looking into it,” says Anthony Roake, a spokesman for Air Force Space Command. “I’m reaching blanks with the folks I’ve talked to.” U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, the and Missile Defense Agency sources are similarly stumped.
In an odd statement, U.S. Northern Command says it’s “unable to provide specific details… [but] can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military.”
Roake notes the Air Force’s last launch in the area was on Friday, when an unmanned Delta 2 rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base with an Italian satellite aboard.
A local CBS TV news crew caught the suspected missile, which threw up a long, thick plume against the Pacific sunset. If I learn anything about where the thing was headed, you’ll be the first to know.
Update: Some folks are seizing on a Navy notice — advising pilots to avoid the area — as evidence that the sea service isn’t lying about the launch. But that notice was issued today, hours after the mystery missile sighting.
Meanwhile, naval analyst Raymond Pritchett makes a smart point: that the mystery itself is becoming a security problem.
“When someone makes an unannounced launch what looks to be a ballistic missile 35 miles from the nations second largest city (at sea in international waters), and 18 hours later NORAD still doesn’t have any answers at all – that complete lack of information represents a credible threat to national security,” he writes. “If NORAD can’t answer the first and last question, then I believe it is time to question every single penny of ballistic missile defense funding in the defense budget. NORTHCOM needs to start talking about what they do know, rather than leaving the focus on what they don’t know.”
To confuse matters even further: that contrail, seen from that CBS news helicopter, might not have been a missile at all. It’s “probably an aircraft contrail seen from a weird angle,” reader WB emails, attaching the photo below from contrailscience.com. It shows a plane plume, photographed on New Year’s Eve above San Clemente, California. It, too, was mistaken for a missile. So was this aircraft, photographed in December, 2008. To WB’s eyes, the ascent from yesterday’s launch was “far too slow to be a missile and the glittering exhaust ‘flame’ is, I believe, sun reflecting off the aircraft’s airframe at altitude.”
Spotter: @Rickyars
