“Mystery Missile Launch” Off The Coast Of
California Asks Hard Questions

Eric Renderking Fisk - November 10th, 2010 Bookmark and Share

Monday night a local news crew in Los Angles captured video of what looked like a missile that was launched by either an unseen ship or submarine of the coast of California. The military has made claims through the news outlets that they don’t know for sure what it was, but they know for certain that it posed no threat to the homeland. It’s most likely a jet with an out-of-the-ordinary contrail but neither the Pentagon nor NORAD but they aren’t ruling anything out yet. FAA remains quiet.

I’m not sure which aspect of this event bothers me more; that they don’t know what it is but “it’s not a threat” or that this might be a whole lot of nothing and we’re getting all worked up because the media needed to fill a couple of minutes during the nightly news. Maybe the government is right and it’s just an extraordinary contrail from an ordinary jet. The conditions were just perfect, the angle of the flight path was right, the setting sun and the moisture content in the atmosphere were all part of this optical illusion.

If it’s not what we think it is then we’re all getting scared for no good reason and the rest of this rant might be irrelevant. It’s just a jet; nothing to worry about. Except The Pentagon says they don’t know what it was.

That doesn't bother people, The Pentagon doesn't know what it was? No clue, but nothing to worry about either.

Robert Ellsworth – Retired Ambassador to NATO – says otherwise in a news clip that I’ve seen and I’ve embedded into this rant. According to him that could have been our own military showing off it’s might to the rest of the world while our President is overseas. If the former ambassador to NATO says it’s most likely a missile but we should reserve judgment until the official word from officials has been released; be concerned.

This event answers some tough questions that I’ve thought about time and again.

What would happen if a country like China, North Korea, Iran, or any one of the other "Axis Of Evil" countries just launched a missile off the coast of The United States at random? Just park a sub or ship off the coast of California and torch one off! How would citizens and the military react?

No bomb, no damage… just a rocket launched into space or explodes a few miles above the stratosphere. No harm, no foul?

What could the military do if something like this were to happen, if a rocket was launched from one of the countless cargo ships that bring goods to this country ever day? What if China was somehow able to launch a missile off our cost as a warning to us not to monetize our debt? Is it possible that a rival country could use such a ship to launch a missile attack against the United States and what could we do about it?

Could we even uncover that plot before it happened? If not, what could we do after the missiles were launched?  And would the launch of missiles so close to home make a missile defense program useless?

Events like these tell us a lot about ourselves in other ways besides shining a bright, harsh light at our state of unpreparedness. In a post 9/11/2001 world, the FAA doesn’t know what jet people saw off the coast of California that’s being mistaken as a missile?

The Pentagon doesn't know what it was, but is absolutely sure it posed no threat to us.

CNN posted an article about this and there was a quote that made me feel that I was a little less crazy and conspiratorial…

John Pike, a defense expert who is director of GlobalSecurity.org, said he believes he has solved the mystery.

"It's clearly an airplane contrail," Pike said Tuesday afternoon. "It's an optical illusion that looks like it's going up, whereas in reality it's going toward the camera. The tip of the contrail is moving far too slowly to be a rocket. When it's illuminated by the sunset, you can see hundreds of miles of it ... all the way to the horizon.

"Why the government is so badly organized that they can't get somebody out there to explain it and make this story go away. ... I think that's the real story," Pike added. "I mean, it's insane that with all the money we are spending, all these technically competent people, that they can't get somebody out there to explain what is incredibly obvious."

To shut up a loud-mouth fedora wearing “blogger” from New Hampshire and all others like me, wouldn’t it be easy to just have the FAA report that this was Airline Flight X that departed from “Point A” that arrived at “Point B” at such and such time? Where did this so-called jet take off from, where did it land, and who does it belong to?

How does this look to the rest of the world, not just to our rivals and enemies that have wanted to harm us and have succeeded on occasion, but also to our allies and “frenemies” such as Russia and Pakistan? We don’t know what it was, but we are sure that it’s not a danger. Fewer things can inspire a loss of confidence faster than ignorance and incompetence.

While I’m on the subject of unsolved aeronautical mysteries; I’ve never been convinced that the FBI/NTSB/CIA/FAS “official” TWA Flight 800 story was accurate. This was a jet that exploded in mid-air 1996 off the coast of Long Island on it's way from JFK Airport to Paris that made even more headlines when eyewitnesses sought out the media and reported that they say something from the surface of the ocean streak towards the jet before the jet explosion. Many news organization like The New York Times and The Seattle Post published articles reporting on the evidence of high velocity impacts and trace amounts of explosives in the wreckage, then these and other news outlets reported that the NTSB, FBI and CIA were all complicit to silence the witness who claim they saw missiles strike the Bowing 747.

By no means am I trying to say that I’m an expert on all things conspiratorial or I willing to admit that I have a special insight into what really goes on in the world. Nor am I implying that these two events are directly related outside of the coincidence that these two events involve possible missile sightings. One event reminded me of the other, this mystery and speculation reminded me of that happened 14 years ago and forces to yet again the credibility of my government. Then there are the other “sneaky-peep” things we’ve all witnessed, never had answers, and the news items just evaporate off the news sites.

How soon we forgot the BP oil spill and the countless gallons of crude oil that’s still floating out there… somewhere in the gulf.

What we think we saw last Monday night could very well be just the contrail of a jet, someone else is now speculating that this simply could be the flight from Hawaii to Phoenix, Arizona that passed through the general area around that time. The logical part of me wants to believe that and get on with writing about something else. Then there’s the part of me that raises an eyebrow and doesn’t want to so easily concede. I don’t want to except a simple, pat answer just because the government tells me to do so.

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Links

Contrail Science Overflow - Jet contrails from some angles look like missile trails

ABCNews - Mystery Missile: Launch of Unknown Missile Caught on Tape in California - Navy, Military Investigating Missile Video; No Agencies Claim Responsibility Yet," By LUIS MARTINEZ Nov. 9, 2010

The Voice of Russia - Unauthorized ICBM launched off California's coast? The Pentagon has made no comment on the incident, but hurried to assure the Americans that the “mysterious missile' launch posed no threat.

FoxNews.com: "Blogger Believes Webcam Image Solves 'Missile' Mystery," By Jeremy A. Kaplan & Justin Fishel | Published November 10, 2010

CBS News: "Military Says Missile-Like Object Wasn't Missile - But Expert Interviewed by London Newspaper Is Sure It Was; Mystery of California Contrail Continues," By David Martin | WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2010

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