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Mystery Missile Launch Seen off California Coast
- njharman 16y agoArticle 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 16y agoI 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 16y agoThey might be dumb enough, but I'd wager all the money in my wallet that they don't they have any boomers.
- mortenjorck 16y agoAs 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.
- dpatru 16y agoSuppose China were the launcher. Why might it do such a thing?
- siculars 16y agoUnless 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]
- mistermann 16y agoDifferent, but similar: http://tinyurl.com/5dpxpo http://tinyurl.com/5dpxpo
- dpatru 16y agoFrom 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.
- jonknee 16y agoIt would be the biggest news story in the world right now if another country launched an ICBM 35 miles off our coast.
- exit 16y agoi 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.
- sorbus 16y agoGiven 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.
- jarin 16y agoUnless 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/CYZ-10
- mustpax 16y agoI'm sure NSA can design a secure cryptosystem that does not require key material of the same length as plaintext.
- exit 16y agobut why bother? storage is so cheap nowadays, and one-time padding is as secure as your physical security detail.
- mustpax 16y agoKey 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.
- stygianguest 16y agoDoes 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 16y agoICBMs 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 16y agoIndeed, there are no conventionally-armed ICBMs or SLBMs, for precisely this "likely to start a nuclear war" reason.
- alex77 16y agoVery 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.
- protomyth 16y agoThe 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.
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- luckyland 16y agoSlow news day? This is not that unusual of an occurrence, and they're not always announced.
- JakeSc 16y agoHow often does this happen? Do you have sources (a long-shot, considering the fact that they're not always announced)?
- luckyland 16y agoJust 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.
- yread 16y agoIt could also be a test of the missile shield. Like this one http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Japan_says_succeeds_in_missile_shield_test_with_US_999.html http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Japan_says_succeeds_in_mis...
- harry 16y agoThis 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.
- arethuza 16y agoHere 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZZV464z9g8
- leviathant 16y agoIf 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._accuracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot#Success_rate_vs...
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- tptacek 16y agoI think Asia already knows we can launch missiles from submarines.
- garply 16y agoI think it's called "saber-rattling".
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- andreyf 16y agoThe 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?
- jfb 16y agoYeah, 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 16y agoMaybe 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.
- harold 16y agoInteresting 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 16y agoCould 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.
- ryandvm 16y agohttp://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e3gf3/a_missile_was_launched_off_the_california_coast/c14zqpm 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.
- cyanbane 16y ago'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.
- runjake 16y agoBut this is for tonight, not last night when the phenomena occurred.
- wheaties 16y agoWonder 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 16y agoI choose to pick the obvious answer first. (Military alerts like these are almost daily on the Pacific coast)
- joshwa 16y agoCompanion metafilter thread (direct your snark here): http://www.metafilter.com/97436/LA-Missle http://www.metafilter.com/97436/LA-Missle
- bl4k 16y agoThe 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.
- vietor 16y agoPossible alternative explanation: http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-los-angeles/missile-launch-over-southern-california-explained 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-mysterious-california-missile-launch-that-wasnt/5646/ http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/the...
- tibbon 16y agoSurely the FAA could verify if there was a flight taking off in that trajectory right?
- vietor 16y agoI 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.
- roedog 16y agoA 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/ http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/
- tibbon 16y agoIf 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.
- mp3jeep01 16y agoClearly it's a weather balloon...
- Zaak 16y agoWhose swamp gas was trapped in a thermal pocket...
- stuhacking 16y agowhich reflected the light from Venus...
- protomyth 16y agoIsn't the X-37B still in orbit? Could this have been a test for it (missile detection / destruction)?
- curtisma 16y agoCould 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...
- wyclif 16y agoJet contrails from some angles look like missile trails: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1887890 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1887890
- caf 16y agoIndeed, it appears it was America West flight 808.
- twok 16y agoA solid hypothesis from a redditor: http://bit.ly/aNr7sm http://bit.ly/aNr7sm
- nickpinkston 16y agoMy 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.
- Figs 16y agoIt'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.html http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/11/09/california.contrails/index....
- caf 16y agoHas anyone checked for a NOTAM covering the area at the time?
- JabavuAdams 16y agoI'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 16y agoAgreed. There's a picture here of a similar-looking jet contrail: http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3136/it-aint-no-thing http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3136/it-aint-no-thi...
- jonhendry 16y agoThat's no missile, it's Tony Stark.
- wangluxiaoyu 16y agoCan'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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hvtOEHKJsI