Mystery Missile Launch Seen off California Coast | Hacker News Reader

Mystery Missile Launch Seen off California Coast

cbsnews.com

109 pointsph0rque85 comments

The fact that the US military response was 'nope, wasn't us' instead of 'oh my fucking god can you believe somebody just fired a missile off the coast of LA!' pretty much tells me it was them.

Possible alternative explanation:

http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-los-angeles/missile-launc...

Fits with your point about the DoD being all kinds of crazy if they suspected it was an actual event they had no hand in.

As usual the low quality of video and unreliability of eye-witnesses are going to make this way more crazy than it needs to be, regardless of the actual eventual outcome.

EDIT: A better explanation with historical pictures: http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/the...

Surely the FAA could verify if there was a flight taking off in that trajectory right?

I would hope that the retain sufficient records to do so, and expect that they will. Whether that will get news coverage is a separate question...

And I'm sure that, regardless, some fraction will insist that it's a cover-up and continue to talk about it for the next decade.

A contrail webpage with the "jet contrail looks like missile if you look at it from one angle" theory. http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/

If it is a missile, then clearly a group of people with a boat should go and recover whatever it is. Since the military denies that they own it, then it seems to be abandoned property.

Surely someone would be interested in buying the remains of it for the technology.

Since the military doesn't own it, then they can't really say anything about you selling/reverse engineering/posting online abandoned property that's probably sitting in international waters now can they?

Either that, or the military is caught in a lie to the American people.

I know if I see what looks to be an ICBM over my city, I'm headed for the closest fallout shelter and assuming the worst. Anyone putting up faux-ICBMs over major cities is clearly causing terrorism, as in causing terror, uncertainty and fear among the public by not explaining and warning them.

>Surely someone would be interested in buying the remains of it for the technology.

...unless it, say, exploded.

Personally, I wouldn't want to pick up an unexploded missile anyway; there'd be no way to know whether it didn't explode because it doesn't have a warhead, or just hasn't exploded yet.

I'd really hope that (if it was the US Military) that they wouldn't shoot live weaponry like that on US territory. Sounds like a great lawsuit- although not one that I'd want the damages (death, harm) originally from.

Actually, that happens all the time. There are many live fire ranges for planes, artillery, etc. scattered across the US. No reason the Navy wouldn't light a few off from a sub.

There isn't a reason that the military can't test weaponry, they just usually do it in quarantined areas or with notice to the public.

Haha - tell that to my uncle who got buzzed by an F16 in his Cessna outside the live fire zone ;-)

This is why they usually fire the self-destruct ordnance on spent stages so it's not floating in the ocean. I imagine likewise for anything they want kept secret. Self-destruct or flight termination systems are required by the missile ranges.

> Since the military doesn't own it, then they can't really say anything about you selling/reverse engineering/posting online abandoned property that's probably sitting in international waters now can they?

This is so wrong. Look up "ITAR". If you're a US citizen, the State Department can have your ass. If you're not a US citizen, well then, the options could be grimmer.

Hmm, that's mainly to do with import/export though right? If its sitting in international waters (which it may or may not be) then that isn't you exporting it from the US. In fact, they sent the weapon outside the US themselves.

Also, maybe you wouldn't sell it outside of the US, but inside.

Wouldn't stopping me from just even simply owning this infringe my right to bear (massive) arms? :)

"If it is a missile, then clearly a group of people with a boat should go and recover whatever it is."

How is anyone going to know where it went down?

Science!

Given how close to land it was and the time it was fired (just approaching the peak of the news cycle) certainly points to a publicity stunt of some sort.

Standard military exercise, people. Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.

Why would they admit their ignorance, rather than make discreet queries through private channels?

This is probably a contrail.

I think Asia already knows we can launch missiles from submarines.

I think it's called "saber-rattling".

The article points this out explicitly: that we used to do these kinds of launches as a sign of military power against the Soviets. What are we trying to show China, that our submarine ICMB launchers haven't yet rusted into oblivion?

Yeah, that comment didn't make a lot of sense to me. If we have to launch a missile to prove to the PLA that our deterrent is still in place, um, we have bigger problems than I thought. EDIT: To say nothing of the Taiwanese.

Maybe the idea is that we're not just proving that we're capable of launching missiles that way, but that we have enough of them to waste some on pointless launches. If we only had one to protect our whole west coast, we wouldn't launch it without good reason.

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e3gf3/a_missile_...

tl;dr: We're launching a missile tonight. Stay away please.

Edit: Doh. The date for this is Nov 9th, not last night. Not sure how I missed that - this isn't rocket science.

But this is for tonight, not last night when the phenomena occurred.

Wonder who didn't adjust a calendar for a leap year in some government code. Surely today could be Nov. 10, right? It's not like someone's hacked together version of a date/time system hasn't made it's way across my desk, I don't know, fifty million times...

"Why don't use you a DateTime object for that?" "They have those?" ...

I choose to pick the obvious answer first.

(Military alerts like these are almost daily on the Pacific coast)

'Call of Duty: Black Ops' comes out for the major video game consoles tonight, my guess is that these guys didn't want to be stuck at work (shooting missiles) on release night when they could have been at home playing with virtual ones, so my guess is that they just bumped it up a night.

i wonder how much bandwidth is required for the administration to remain in contact with washington while abroad. it must be someones job to decide how large of a one time pad to order up from the nsa before air force one departs.

Given how cheap storage is now, I wouldn't be surprised if they just had a few thousand >4GB SD or microSD cards, each labelled with a number, and randomly chose which one to carry each time - or if they carried a bunch of them around in a briefcase. Assuming that they're using one time pads, that is.

Unless things have changed significantly since I was in the Navy (doubtful), they still use things like this to store crypto keys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/CYZ-10

I'm sure NSA can design a secure cryptosystem that does not require key material of the same length as plaintext.

but why bother? storage is so cheap nowadays, and one-time padding is as secure as your physical security detail.

Key management is hard. Keys need to be encrypted at all times and only duplicated when authorized. Generally people use dedicated secure storage hardware for this purpose. The more "key" you have lying around the harder it is to keep all of it secure.

Jet contrails from some angles look like missile trails: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1887890

Indeed, it appears it was America West flight 808.

It's probably just airplane contrails stretching from the horizon. If it were a missile, then it'd be a bit surprising that the FAA isn't aware of any unusually fast moving objects in the area based on their radar replays:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/09/california.contrails/index....

Slow news day?

This is not that unusual of an occurrence, and they're not always announced.

How often does this happen? Do you have sources (a long-shot, considering the fact that they're not always announced)?

Just going from personal experience.

Submarine and Vandenberg launches are visible a few times a year to those living Southern California.

They're visible from I-10 near the AZ border as well.

Clearly it's a weather balloon...

Whose swamp gas was trapped in a thermal pocket...

which reflected the light from Venus...

A solid hypothesis from a redditor: http://bit.ly/aNr7sm

My dad fired a Minuteman II from Vandenberg AFB (just North of LA) into the ocean in the late 70's. I'd be surprised if the Navy didn't do the same, and you probably don't want to do it outside of your own territorial waters unless it's a large naval exercise.

It could also be a test of the missile shield. Like this one http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Japan_says_succeeds_in_mis...

This still amazes me. Being able to detect, aim at and strike something flying at the speed of a rocket - with another rocket - in outer freaking space.

Even the patriot missiles back in the early 90's always awed me. I have trouble hitting a target in a consistent spot with a bullet from 100 yards.

Here is a video of a Sprint ABM (from the 70s) being launched and passing close to a RV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZZV464z9g8

RV here is Reentry Vehicle. (I saw it looking for something people could drive and got puzzled.)

Don't be confused: http://impawards.com/1987/posters/spaceballs_ver1.jpg

If you had trouble consistently hitting targets, you would probably fit right in with Patriot missiles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot#Success_rate_vs...

Hitting still targets is easy. Consistently hitting the same spot on a still target is difficult. What I'm saying is I'm impressed we can hit anything!

Think about the margins of error involved - how precisely do you have to know the Patriot rocket's position, vector and speed to intercept something falling from space? How do you take into account the fragmentation issues of a device like a MIRV? How do you account for any differences in the target projectile's path?

It's just an astounding problem to me. I very much dig the thought that I'm the same species as those that figured it out.

> Being able to detect, aim at and strike something flying at the speed of a rocket - with another rocket - in outer freaking space.

First and foremost, it is being able to convince your opponent that you can do that.

Same. I've heard someone in the military describe it as trying to hit a bullet with another bullet.

You obviously didn't play enough Missile Command as a kid.

Somewhat less amazing, because it doesn't really work other than in very controlled test conditions.

Was the target a normal missile, or was it equipped with a "here I am!" beacon to make it easier to hit?

Companion metafilter thread (direct your snark here):

http://www.metafilter.com/97436/LA-Missle

Isn't the X-37B still in orbit? Could this have been a test for it (missile detection / destruction)?

Could this be the contrail from the X-37's re-entry? It is due to come back soon and would be coming in to cali...

Interesting that Obama's trip abroad has been accompanied by so much saber rattling from our end.

Makes me wonder what they know and why all the chest thumping all of a sudden.

Could be to improve the presidents image -- he just lost the election (the republicans can now block legislation in both houses) -- now he needs to seem tough so he has a chance in 12.

Article seems to make assumption it was one of our missiles. Kind of probable given distance off of coast. But, still an assumption reporters/news orgs should not make.

I don't think any country is stupid enough to 'show off' missiles that near to the USA. Well, there's North Korea but the rocket didn't explode.

They might be dumb enough, but I'd wager all the money in my wallet that they don't they have any boomers.

As much of a horrible, tragic joke as the KWP and its Dear Leader are, I tend to assume a lot of the highest-ranking officials there know their limits, and, despite the daily charade each of them lives, the smarter ones wouldn't actually allow such an act to occur.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Suppose China were the launcher. Why might it do such a thing?

Unless China has eclipsed us in naval warfare, specifically submersible stealth naval warfare, then it is extremely unlikely that they could get a sub within spitting distance of our coast without us knowing about it. And even if they could get a sub that close they wouldn't even think of launching a missile. Last I checked, America still has complete military domination when matched against any other sovereign. Nation building, otoh, is another story entirely.

[edit grammar]

Different, but similar: http://tinyurl.com/5dpxpo

From the article: American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board. . . . It also led to tense diplomatic exchanges, with shaken American diplomats demanding to know why the submarine was "shadowing" the U.S. fleet while Beijing pleaded ignorance and dismissed the affair as coincidence. Analysts believe Beijing was sending a message to America and the West demonstrating its rapidly-growing military capability to threaten foreign powers which try to interfere in its "backyard".

If this incident is similar, I would expect the US military not to admit it.

It would be the biggest news story in the world right now if another country launched an ICBM 35 miles off our coast.

Does anyone know what the precision of these missiles are? I don't suppose they could be used for precision strikes in e.g. Afghanistan, or could they?

ICBMs are reasonably accurate - a couple dozen meters - but there are far, far better options.

There are already plenty of airborne/seaborne cruise missiles and guided bombs in the region, with nearly pinpoint accuracy and much faster time-on-target. Much cheaper and less likely to start a nuclear war with Russia, too.

I don't think anyone knows the accuracy of this particular missile because no one seems to know whose missile it was.

Indeed, there are no conventionally-armed ICBMs or SLBMs, for precisely this "likely to start a nuclear war" reason.

Very precise indeed, the reentry vehicles need to be able to change targets in midflight and evade anti-ballistic missile systems. Accuracy is crucial, as you need a much larger nuke to blow something up if your warhead is far way from the target

If you had an unlimited budget you could use space rockets to drop tiny bombs from the other side of the world, but it doesn't really make sense (like killing mosquitos with shotguns). Anyway, the payload is coming down at several kilometers a second, so that 'precise' strike will still destroy a large area from its kinetic energy alone.

The other problem with using ICBM's to drop conventional bombs / kinetics weapon is that Russia might get a little 'antsy' when we are launching rockets at Afghanistan.

Good point. Russia has the ability to detect our ICBM's, but they cannot distinguish the warhead, so it'd be impossible to determine whether we were nuking them or dropping a deuce on Afghanistan.

As someone who's worked with ICBMs, I can say ceejayoz is incorrect. They are accurate to the low single-digit meters. Basically the tip top of GPS (and in some cases terrain avoidance radar) technology.

You guys are actually testing these right now - conventional warheads on ICBMs (SLBMs technically). Gates announced them (kinda) back in April. I believe the term they like to throw around is "prompt conventional global strike". Bush tried really hard to get a bunch of monies into these projects.

You have to admit, it does have kind of a boyish sci-fi type of appeal. Knock down a building from the other side of the world within 20 minutes.

But practically, it's quite possibly the worst idea ever. The ballistic missile tests we conduct right now are already announced well in advanced with missile tracks specifically chosen so it couldn't be mistaken for an actual strike. The limitations in use would be ridiculous. I mean, you'll have to aim around Russia and China. And even then, it's still playing with fire.

"And we have prompt global strike affording us some conventional alternatives on long-range missiles that we didn't have before." - Gates

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36362669/ns/meet_the_press/page/...

Has anyone checked for a NOTAM covering the area at the time?

I've heard from others who are researching the issue that there was no NOTAM. Also, people in the amateur rocketry community are being asked if this was one of theirs.

My guess: contrail + some people in the gov't bought the missile angle, but there was no missile. So now some officials are worried that someone launched a missile that they don't know about.

Agreed. There's a picture here of a similar-looking jet contrail: http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3136/it-aint-no-thi...

That's no missile, it's Tony Stark.

Can't believe that no one on HN has figured this out yet. The missile was actually just one rather careless salvo in the US joint military campaign to halt "Operation Black Swan," the long-anticipated alien invasion that was expected to begin on November 8. Collen Thomas described the whole thing in excruciating detail on Youtube last month:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hvtOEHKJsI

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