The Epoch Times November 09, 2010
Mystery Missile Befuddles NATO, NORAD, and the Pentagon
By Jack Phillips
A mystery missile was launched in the Pacific Ocean near the coast of southern California on Monday night. The mysterious object was caught on camera by KCBS television.
The KCBS report added that authorities are “staying tight-lipped” about the projectile.
NORAD released a statement which said, “At this time, we can confirm that there is no threat to our nation and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military," according to AFP.
The Pentagon said that whoever launched the missile remains a mystery. The Navy also said the missile was not launched by them.
"So far we've come up empty with any explanation," Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters. "We're talking to other parts of the U.S. government. We're doing everything we can to try to figure out if anybody has any knowledge of what this event may have been."
The location of the missile was around 35 miles from Los Angeles and near the coast north of Catalina Island.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert Ellsworth noted the “spectacular” nature of the projectile and added, “it could be a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine … to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that.”
After evaluating the video footage of the launch, satellite imagery, and other monitoring technology, a US official said that the trail was probably caused by an aircraft. "The best we can tell, it was probably caused by an aircraft," the anonymous official told the Los Angeles Times.
ContrailScience.com, a website that evaluates known conspiracy theories, said that the object is an optical illusion, noting that the contrail is horizontal and not vertical, which suggests that it could be an aircraft like a jet.
The blog adds that there is a misconception “that it’s flying away from the viewer, when it’s actually flying towards the viewer” because the base of the contrail appears wider than the end.
The website adds that the trail may not reach down to the ground due to it going beyond the horizon. "The Earth is round, and things go beneath the horizon eventually, no matter how high they are," the website continued.
John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, told the Times that it most likely is not a missile.
"If it were secret, we'd do it at night in Alaska where only the caribou could see it," Pike told the newspaper. "It's an airplane contrail, pure and simple."
He made similar comments to contrailscience.com, saying that the trajectory appears to be off for it to be a missile.
"I've seen a lot of rocket and airplane contrails over the years," he said. "What I saw was an airplane contrail."
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