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It's a huge mystery how an airline pilot could possibly see a cruise missile shaped object right outside of the White Sands Missile Range. Probably aliens.
by jandrese 6y ago
It's a huge mystery how an airline pilot could possibly see a cruise missile shaped object right outside of the White Sands Missile Range. Probably aliens.
- themodelplumber 6y agoAre there cruise missiles that operate at those altitudes? Seems like "sitting duck" height for a cruise missile.
- ceejayoz 6y agoAltitude fits the mission. If you're throwing Tomahawks at the Taliban, you'll get longer range from a higher altitude approach, with little risk of being detected let alone shot down. If you're trying to hit Moscow, by all means, try to avoid radar by going 50 feet off the ground.
- mbg721 6y agoEither there's military activity that the military doesn't want to talk about, or extraterrestrials consider green chile a delicacy that is otherwise unobtainable in the universe. Both seem equally plausible.
- lend000 6y agoBecause cruise missiles regularly do close unannounced fly-by's of passenger jets in civilian airspace /s.
- poisonarena 6y agothis is not reddit
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- redis_mlc 6y agoFYI: foreign governments are known to lock onto airliners in flight from naval and land-based weapons systems. Russia is thought to have shot down a few airliners "by accident" that way when they didn't disengage.
- Spooky23 6y agoDepends. In the 80s there were “UFO” sightings in upstate NY which were tomahawk missiles flying between Rome and Griffis AFB for testing purposes. I believe they appeared triangular from some angles due to landing gear.
- abruzzi 6y agothe northeast of the state is actually pretty far from WSMR, and no launches from WSMR leave the range that I'm aware of (or at least haven't for a long time. They did launch a V2 after WWII, and it went the wrong direction and hit the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez.)
- mwerd 6y agoIt was over 300 of miles from the white sands missile range. The plane had just flown over the western edge of Oklahoma, in the far northeast corner of new Mexico. It was closer to the air force academy in Colorado Springs than it was to white sands.
- King-Aaron 6y agoI'm not completely up to speed on modern cruise missiles, but don't they leave a smoke trail/contrail/etc behind them if they have a conventional propulsion system? Or do they burn fairly clean in flight?
- jcims 6y agoAside from launch where they typically have some kind of boost stage, cruise missiles fly at low altitudes with small turbofan engines. Not much of a visual exhaust signature: https://youtu.be/BGoJl8Lr46g https://youtu.be/BGoJl8Lr46g https://youtu.be/WyeMyhKE5Yw https://youtu.be/WyeMyhKE5Yw
- King-Aaron 6y agoAh fair enough. Thats some impressive footage by the way!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mike_d 6y agoThere is absolutely zero chance a cruise missile would be fired without closing the airspace to civilian aircraft. The pilot was at 37,000 feet and said the object was above them. Commercial planes top out at about 42k feet and would have shown up on ADS-B. A U-2 flying at 60k would look like a long cylindrical object about the size of a cruise missile (in the same way a 747 looks small from the ground), and not show up on instrurments. Oh and they regularly fly out of Nevada to swoop down over New Mexico/Texas on their way to Mexico and Central America.
- jonnycomputer 6y ago0 chance implies no one makes mistakes.
- wonder_er 6y ago> There is absolutely zero chance a cruise missile would be fired without closing the airspace to civilian aircraft. Sometimes the military misses a lot of items on the checklist, and accidentally ships a nuclear missile where it didn't intend [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n... I wouldn't say "absolutely zero chance", but I'd say "it's unlikely this was an expected outcome, and it's possible that someone is in deep trouble right now."
- rattray 6y agoFor others unfamiliar and reticent to google, a "U-2" is: > The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is an American single-jet engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- l31g 6y agoU-2s don't fly fast.
- 6y ago
- bumby 6y agoYou think the range officer just let this one get away? They shut down highways during testing, let alone airspace.