

Mystery Missile Launch Seen off California Coast - ph0rque
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/09/national/main7036716.shtml

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bl4k
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.

~~~
tibbon
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.

~~~
metageek
> _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._

~~~
tibbon
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.

~~~
nickpinkston
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.

~~~
Pyrodogg
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.

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

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

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jfb
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.

~~~
DougWebb
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.

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ryandvm
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e3gf3/a_missile_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e3gf3/a_missile_was_launched_off_the_california_coast/c14zqpm)

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.

~~~
runjake
But this is for _tonight_ , not _last night_ when the phenomena occurred.

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wheaties
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?" ...

~~~
runjake
I choose to pick the obvious answer first.

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

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exit
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.

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

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

~~~
mustpax
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.

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

~~~
caf
Indeed, it appears it was America West flight 808.

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Figs
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....](http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/09/california.contrails/index.html)

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luckyland
Slow news day?

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

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

~~~
luckyland
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.

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mp3jeep01
Clearly it's a weather balloon...

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

~~~
stuhacking
which reflected the light from Venus...

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

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nickpinkston
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.

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yread
It could also be a test of the missile shield. Like this one
[http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Japan_says_succeeds_in_mis...](http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Japan_says_succeeds_in_missile_shield_test_with_US_999.html)

~~~
harry
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.

~~~
leviathant
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot#Success_rate_vs._accuracy)

~~~
harry
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.

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joshwa
Companion metafilter thread (direct your snark here):

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

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

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curtisma
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...

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harold
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.

~~~
tomjen3
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.

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njharman
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.

~~~
stygianguest
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.

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

~~~
mortenjorck
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.

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stygianguest
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?

~~~
ceejayoz
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.

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

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

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JabavuAdams
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.

~~~
caf
Agreed. There's a picture here of a similar-looking jet contrail:
[http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3136/it-aint-no-
thi...](http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3136/it-aint-no-thing)

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

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wangluxiaoyu
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>

