Daily Mail November 10, 2010
Mystery solved? California 'missile' may be optical illusion caused by aircraft... so why can't the Pentagon tell us?
Experts today continued to unravel the mystery of the ‘missile’ spotted streaking across the Californian skyline.
While the Pentagon is still unable to identify the cause of the orange plume, speculation is pointing towards the likelihood the vapour trail was an optical illusion caused by an aircraft.
John Pike, a defence and aerospace expert who runs website GlobalSecurity.org, is convinced the phenomenon was a simple trick of the eye.
He said: 'This thing is so obviously an airplane contrail... There's a reason that they're called rockets.'
He said the object was moving too slow to be a missile, and footage showed light of varying intensity coming from the object, which suggested reflected light from the sun rather than light generated from an engine.
It looked like a missile launch, he said, because of an optical illusion that made the contrail appear as though it started on the ground and zoomed straight up.
In reality, he said, the contrail began on the horizon and ran parallel to the ground.'It was an unusually clear day, so what looked like a missile launch 35 miles off the coast of Los Angeles was actually the contrail of a jet that stretched 300 miles into the distance.'
His view was echoed by a senior military official who last night told Fox News that the contrail was ‘more likely caused by an airplane than anything else because the other possibilities of rockets or missiles are turning up negative.’
The Pentagon has denied responsibility for the missile, stating unequivocally it was not fired from a U.S. Navy vessel.
Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said: ‘Nobody within the Department of Defence that we’ve reached out to has been able to explain what this contrail is and where it came from.
'So far, we’ve come up empty with an explanation,’ he added.
And Spokesmen for the Navy, Air Force, the Defence Department and North American Aerospace Defence Command all said they were in the dark.
Foreign aggressors and private ballistic firms have also been ruled out.
Military officials said it was possible a private company may have been behind the incident.
But Pike did not agree with internet theories that it was an unannounced missile test, adding: 'If it were secret, we'd do it at night in Alaska.'
However, Doug Richardson, editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, said he was left in little doubt that it was a missile after examining the video.
‘It’s a solid propellant missile,’ he told the Times. ‘You can tell from the efflux [smoke].’
He added it could have been a ballistic missile launched from a submarine or an interceptor, the defensive anti-missile weapon used by Navy surface ships.
Meanwhile, Kevin Martin a meteorologist of the Southern Californian Weather Authority also subscribes to the aircraft theory.
He told Examiner.com: ‘We see this often when the flights come at the right time, however, some people are just out to witness it at the right time.’
Judging from the images, the rocket looked to be within sight of a passenger jet flying out of nearby Los Angeles Airport.
Colonel Lapan said an official missile test would usually involve air space being closed off and a notification to all shipping in the area. But there was no advance notice of the event.
He said it was ‘implausible’ that the test could be carried out so near to the airport.
The video was captured on Monday evening about 5pm by a news helicopter flying over Los Angeles.
The contrail was about 35 miles out to sea, just north of Catalina, a small island about 20 miles from the mainland.
Nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base confirmed it fired a Delta II rocket carrying a satellite last Friday, but had not authorised or carried out any launches since then.
Robert Ellsworth, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and a former Deputy Secretary of Defence, said after seeing the video: ‘It’s spectacular. It takes the breath away.’
He added to the confusion by calling it a ‘big missile’, larger than a Tomahawk missile, which can be fired from a submerged submarine.
With President Obama currently on a 10-day tour of Asia, he speculated it may have been the US military showing off their muscle to Far Eastern leaders.
He said: 'It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from an underwater submarine to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that.'
But he was quick to point out that this was just a theory.
He also revealed that a test missile was fired over the Atlantic to demonstrate America's power to the Soviets when there was a Soviet Union, but doesn't believe it has ever been done over the Pacific.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, issued a statement jointly with the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, saying that the contrail was not the result of a foreign military launching a missile. It provided no further details.
The statement said: 'We can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military. We will provide more information as it becomes available.'
Perhaps no one had a better view of the alleged rocket than KCBS-TV Channel 2 cameraman Gil Leyvas. He was aboard the station's helicopter shooting footage of sunset over the ocean at 5.15pm when he noticed a spiral-shaped vapor trail and zoomed in to get a better look.
The on-board camera showed a plume twisting up from the horizon and narrowing as it climbed into the sky northwest of Santa Catalina Island, he said.
'Whatever it was, it was spinning up into the sky kind of like a spiral,' he said. 'It was quite a sight to see. It was spectacular.'
And he wasn't the only one to see it. When Kelly Spear looked out the back window of her San Pedro home to see a rising orange line on the horizon, she thought it might be a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
She said: 'I told myself it was just a plane, but I really had no idea. We have a pretty expansive view, and I've never seen anything like that before.'
© Copyright 2010, Associated Newspapers Ltd
