Interesting conjecture. I just finished reading the post on the Can missles and before I read this thread I had the same thought. I started the "Official Fireball and Sonic Boom" thread for this reason if you check the postings there you will see that there were quite a flurry of siteings April through Aug then they subside only to pick up markedly in the last month or so. The current siteings seem to be much larger and closer and yet none have seemed to land in areas greatly populated. The missle firings which apparently never seem to land could well be an attempt to derail a disasterous hit. The other interesting thing to note is that there has been no reaction from ANY MAJOR FOREIGN POWER in regards to this. One would think either the Russians or the Chinese would be screaming about these launchings which leads me to believe they were informed and concurred.