Missile mirth

American Goy | 11-11-10

You are looking at an airplane (of course! duh! right?!):

Jon Stewart is just soooooooo hilarious, as he mocks the whole missile launch controversy:

Huffington Post article and video of the man himself.

NYPost weighs in here.

Science lesson from a hack:
Time magazine blog.

Physics, it turns out, can get in the way of a good story. After all, the earth is round, which can make horizontal contrails look vertical on the horizon. For an explanation of what actually appears to have happened, see here. This so-called “missile” was likely a flight from Honolulu to Phoenix, or a UPS cargo flight.

I notice one innocuous word, likely.

As in we don’t know still what the hell it was.

But wait, we now have official word from the Pentagon, hot off the presses.

Lets go there now and finally get the clarification we need on what it was, and to be able to act smug and laugh at the conspiracy idiots.

UPI: Military: California contrail not missile.

“There is no evidence to suggest that this is anything else other than a condensation trail from an aircraft,” said the statement from Col. Dave Lapan, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense. “As stated yesterday, NORAD and USNORTHCOM determined that there was no threat to the U.S. homeland.”

The statement does not say whether the plume came from a military, commercial, government or private aircraft.

Right.

Having a conspiracy addled brain, I am seeing here a non denial denial.

Of course there is no evidence (physical) other than the video, which can, indeed, be a contrail of a plane (or a missile).

After all, we did not get clarification on what the hell it was from the Pentagon.

But don’t fret, there was no threat, from most probably a plane – nothing to see here, go away already.

The Pentagon has spoken, TV has lampooned it, move along, move along.

…

Meanwhile, in the UK, much more saner coverage, and quoting of actual experts and not paid hack “journalists” paid to push a story:
The Telegraph, UK: Mystery ‘missile’ launch in US: the theories.

Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, said it might have been a Standard interceptor, the anti-missile weapon which is fitted to the US Navy’s Aegis guided-missile cruisers as part of the American missile defence programme.

He said: “It’s a solid propellant missile, you can tell from the efflux [smoke] but they’re not showing enough of the tape to show whether it’s staging [jettisoning its sections].”

Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets.

Verdict: missile.

Robert Ellsworth, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defence, said it was “pretty big” but “not a Tomahawk” cruise missile.

He said: “It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine to demonstrate to Asia that we can do that.”

Robert Ellsworth, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defence.

Verdict: missile.

We have one naysayer in the article, for balance:

A more down-to-earth – and non-military – explanation was given by John Pike, director of the US-based security analyst firm globalsecurity.org.

He said: “The local station chopped up the video and so it’s hard to watch it continuously but at one place you can see it has changed course – rockets don’t do that.”

He added it was most likely to be a normal aircraft contrail which appears different in the sun: “It’s an airplane that is heading toward the camera and the contrail is illuminated by the setting sun.”

John Pike, director of the US-based security analyst firm globalsecurity.org.

Verdict: airplane.

Let me jump in and state that modern missiles, such as tomahawk (and many others) of course CAN change course, depending on their programming.

And the tomahawk is a really old technology.

One more article for good measure, the Pentagon version: our friends from the north,
The Canadian Press;

The Pentagon and NASA experts have determined that a billowing contrail seen streaking into the skies above Southern California was likely caused by an airliner and not a missile.

Defence Department spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Wednesday that officials were satisfied it was an airplane contrail distorted by camera angle, winds and other environmental factors including a setting sun.

Military experts studied the video and talked to all government agencies that might have been involved in a missile launch and none reported having launched one, Lapan said.

The conclusion was independently supported by Al Bowers, associate director of research at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert, and Patrick Minnis, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, who studies remote sensing of the atmosphere and Earth’s surface.

“A missile would look like that,” said Bowers, whose 27-year career has included stints as chief or lead engineer on such programs as the SR-71 spyplanes turned over to NASA by the Air Force.

“It could potentially have a contrail that shape,” he told The Associated Press. “(But) the motion looks a little suspect to me, and my conclusion would be that, yeah, it’s most probably an aircraft.”

A missile would look like that… indeed.

But it was not moving like a 1950’s missile, it was making corrections to its flight.

Like, for example (pure speculation on my part) a Tomahawk missile, or an anti-missile missile defense guided missile.

Again, despite hundreds of satellites in the sky, despite NASA monitoring, despite NORAD monitoring, despite air traffic controllers monitoring, we still do not know what it was.

If it was an airplane, kindly tell us what flight it was – civilian or military.

If civilian, please list the type, the flight number, the destination and its origination.

Otherwise, Jon Stewart, Time bloggers, Pentagon officials, NASA officials, americangoy are all just speculating.

A complete coincidence over this quote unquote missile launch (of course it’s a plane, just look at the picture, it’s so painfully obvious!) is that there happens to be a nearby American military complex.

globalsecurity.org (yes, John Pike’s site, quoted in this article).

The Naval Air Weapons Station, Point Mugu, operates and maintains station facilities and provides support services for Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division and assigned tenants and activities.

Point Mugu is part of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWPNS), the Navy’s full spectrum research, development, test evaluation, and in-service engineering center for weapons systems associated with air warfare (except for anti-submarine warfare systems), missiles and missile subsystems, aircraft weapons integration and assigned airborne electronic warfare systems. NAWCWPNS also maintains and operates the air, land, and sea Naval Western Test Range Complex (NWTRC).

Uncoverage.com;

Readers of UNCOVERAGE.net in the “national defense arena (shall we say?)” say the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carrier, is involved in exercises off San Diego, California right now.

A caller to the Rush Limbaugh show Wednesday morning said that he believes it was a missile launch that was likely made from the high-security “Point Mugu” Naval Base off the coast of California.

Elaine Grossman at Global Security Newswire confirms the obscure San Nicolas Island, which is part of the Naval Base Ventura County (NBVC) Point Mugu facility, is used for clandestine testing of missiles from other countries.

Of course, when you accept the government version, you must also accept the fact that the authorities have no idea what flies where over our heads in our national airspace, that NORAD, NASA, air traffic controllers, satellites, anti missile radars searching the skies for Russian, Chinese, Iranian, terrorist missiles and planes do not track objects in the sky nor do they keep records of those objects (civilian planes, missiles, military jets, etc).

Do you feel better now?

…

Look at the picture.

Isn’t it obvious it is just a plane?

If you question this official narrative, that would make you a conspiracy theorist – one of those nutters lampooned in the news media.

I mean look at the picture.

It’s obvious.