Mystery Missile Launched Near LA 858
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.
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:2, Informative)
The end of the article says that some Ex Ambassador says that it MIGHT be a demonstration to China that US Subs can launch intercontinental missiles - since Obama is touring over there right now.
It's not a mystery, people are just dumb (Score:4, Informative)
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
FAA NOTAM (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's not a mystery, people are just dumb (Score:4, Informative)
Being in the UK, who are currently on GMT, I can tell you that it's not yet 20:00 on 9th Nov. Not for another 2 hours.
If these times are local times then it's even worse.
Either there's been a mega screw up and the missile was launched early (or the announcement was late) or this is for something else.
Tim.
Zulu time (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FAA NOTAM (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:2, Informative)
Are all SLBM's implicitly intercontinental?
Modern ones are. Trident II [wikipedia.org] has a quoted range of 7,000 miles. The French M51 [wikipedia.org] has a quoted range of 6,200 miles.
The original SLBM's would be more properly described as medium range ballistic missiles (MRBM) or intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM). Polaris I had a quoted range of 1,000 miles, making it a MRBM. The A3 version of Polaris had a quoted range of 3,000 miles, making it a IRBM. There is some overlap between these terms and the range figures for them are somewhat arbitrary. The A2 version of Polaris could be classified either way.
Re:Life imitates art (Score:3, Informative)
Not different at all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkT3I6RDPkw&feature=related [youtube.com]
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:4, Informative)
"Obama would already be on his way back"
Uh...in other news, he is. [cnn.com]
Re:It's not a mystery, people are just dumb (Score:3, Informative)
Why would you have a problem with that explanation?
ALL NOTAMS are in GMT time. You expect them to change this world wide rule just for you?
Re:It was told to pilots ahead of time. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [cnn.com]
PLEASE STOP POSTING THAT NOTAM. WRONG TIME. WRONG PLACE.
Re:It's not a mystery, people are just dumb (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing the point. No one is contesting that NOTAMs are timestamped in ZULU. No one is arguing it's a bad idea. No one disputes this at all.
The actual argument is that the NOTAM you cite isn't applicable, because this launch occurred at "at around 5 p.m. Pacific time" [go.com]... or about 01Z 9 October. Yes, the date is right. But that NOTAM wasn't effective yet, and wouldn't be for another 19 hours after the fact.
Seriously. When you find yourself at the bottom of a hole, stop digging.
Re:It's not a mystery, people are just dumb (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to know where the President, Vice President, or Speaker of the House will be before the news story breaks, just read the TFR NOTAMs from the FAA. To enforce the laws against flying in temporary flight restriction areas, they have to let the flying public know at least 24 hours in advance.
Notice that this NOTAM is only valid up to 39,000 Feet MSL (FL390). This may have been a big missile, but I doubt that it was headed for space. If it were, the NOTAM would have gone all the way to FL600 (the limit of enforceable airspace).
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:3, Informative)
SLBMS are intercontinental. The whole point of an SSBN is that it can be anywhere in the ocean and still hit you.
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:2, Informative)
China only has three SSBNs unless they've somehow managed to construct and deploy more of them in secret. In that case I'd say the guys at NRO and DIA need a swift kick in the ass. Surely we have the assets to track three SSBNs, particularly when at least one of them is in port at any given time? I'm also assuming that we retain some sort of ocean surveillance system (SOSUS equivalent) even in the post Cold War era. I know there's a mobile equivalent mounted on ships like the Victorious and Impeccable.
Re:It's just a jet contrail (Score:1, Informative)
Actually it looks like CBS added an actual video of a rocket being fired and interplayed it side by side with footage of the actual UFO. W.T.F. The actual UFO does look like it's coming up from the horizon so you may be right...
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:3, Informative)
Or did you mean "jibe?"
Re:It's just a jet contrail (Score:5, Informative)
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 [slashdot.org] that this could be a jet contrail.
Re:foreign subs free to sail near calif. coast (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Obvious Explanation (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Obvious Explanation (Score:3, Informative)
For instance, it was years before the Lockheed F-117 was widely known due to secrecy and then general media suppression once it was known to exist.
Yah, and we knew about the F-22 before the winning bid was even selected. The days of really cool secret military projects are long gone. These days it's just a handful of 70-year-old guys in the old skunk-works hangar screwing around with technology that was obsolete 5 years ago.
Given the possibility of this being a "secret military missile", or it being just an aircraft contrail that someone mistook for a missile, which do you think is more likely?
Re:plane not miss (Score:5, Informative)
it was not a missile.
http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/#more-440
it was a plane.
Re:Obvious Explanation (Score:2, Informative)
Given the possibility of this being a "secret military missile", or it being just an aircraft contrail that someone mistook for a missile, which do you think is more likely?
I take it you didn't watch the video. It is clearly a rather large rocket, clearly on a trajectory headed for at least space, perhaps orbit. Because the thing was launched so close to US military bases and US population centers, I discount the notion that it could be a foreign launch (based on the fact that we haven't gone to Def-Con 1 or whatever they call it these days). It is also retrograde in orientation, which means it isn't likely a civilian launch (from a company like Sea Launch). Therefore I would suppose that it is indeed a US military launch. Probably some anti-ballistic missile test over the south pacific. Just because the spokesman at the local Navy office didn't have the answer doesn't mean that "the military" doesn't know what it is. If they really didn't know what it was, there'd be fighter jets scrambling all over the place and an announcement from the oval office to follow. Because it got a big "meh" from the military, I'd say it's ours...
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:3, Informative)
North of Santa Catalina IS Los Angeles. Admittedly, TFA is not really precise on where it was, it was actually right next to Santa Barbara island, which is still US Territory. But either way, it doesn't matter if it were actually between Santa Catalina and Los Angeles, archipelagic waters define your national boundary around the outermost islands. In other words, your 12 miles of federally claimed sea only begin once you're past San Nicholas and San Clemente [wikipedia.org]
Military vessels can also only approach if their mission is innocent (it also doesn't matter what other countries the US Navy approaches, everyone already knows we're hypocrites), an unannounced missile launch, no matter where it's pointed, would not be regarded as innocent.
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:2, Informative)
Which treaty is that?
Because Vandenberg AFB has Minuteman silos for testing and Ballistic Missile Defense silos for testing, both of which could house active duty Minuteman III missiles.
Edwards AFB is home to a test wing which includes B-1B and B-2 bombers both of which are nuclear capable, or until 2007 were.
There are three carriers based in California, all of which carry nuclear weapons
Re:Obvious Explanation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's just a jet contrail (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:It's just a jet contrail (Score:5, Informative)
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 [nasa.gov], 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 [wikipedia.org].
I'm sorely disappointed that so many smart people on /. are failing to question the assumption that the object is a missile.
Re:Obvious Explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Whole lot of sea-lawyering going on here (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Obvious Explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Better video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GCgDKNEwyY [youtube.com]
Actual explanation of the event:
http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-los-angeles/missile-launch-over-southern-california-explained [examiner.com]
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.....
Re:Obvious Explanation (Score:2, Informative)
Here on the West Coast, we get enough dust from China already to mess with our Clean Air Act quotas, and pollute the Willamette River [uwb.edu].
Seems a bit costly to go that route, not that it matters in these kinds of calculations.
Re:Hmmm .... (Score:3, Informative)
ICBM always implies ground launched or always has. The Trident in every reference I have ever seen was classified as an SLBM.
Do you have a reference where it is defined as an ICBM?
fas.org classifies it as an SLBM.
Not the only way (Score:3, Informative)
Dude... (Score:3, Informative)
1) We don't even know if this was a sub launched missile. The surface fleet launches missiles all the freaking time, and you couldn't tell the difference from LA.
2) There are test ranges for all sorts of stuff off the coast of SoCal. Recall that the Navy owns several islands out there that they use for target practice.
I guarantee that this is a perfectly ordinary test shot that the Navy doesn't want to talk about.
More than kinda (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's just a jet contrail (Score:3, Informative)
Source: http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/goeswest-lzw/california/ir5/ [nasa.gov] 1011081645G11I05.tif 08-Nov-2010 12:02 to 1011090100G11I05.tif 08-Nov-2010 20:24