Contrails ....

First look at one of the clips .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AMdHBgHtNE
or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9GNuW4-JTY

Now -- nobody is knows what it was. Let's get a few things straight: it was not a jet contrail. It was a missile. A big one. I grew up watching missiles go up from Vandenberg, big ones like Titan IIs and smaller ones designed to test ICBMs and put small launch packages in low orbit.  I know what they look like. Once, seen never forgotten.

So, let's put aside the BS. The next big question is who did it and why? The most likely scenario is a U.S. sub off of our coast in a routine test of launch capability -- just maybe perhaps to show that Chinese that we are thinking about them.  But if so, this was rather crude. There was no need to launch in sight of the U.S. coast to alert the Chinese that we can do this from the Continental shelf. It is guaranteed that within 90 seconds into the boost phase, phones were ringing in Beijing demanding probable impact sites, anyway.

Secondly, there islands off of the Los Angeles Coast ... specifically San Nicolas Island. Which happens to be part of the Pacific Missile Range and is controlled by the U.S. Navy.  Don't even try to come close to the Island or bad things will happen. Try looking at 33"15' N by 119"28 W.  The island was considered as an alternative to White Sands in 1945 ... look it up if that means nothing to you. So while all these hand-wringing morons are shooting their mouths off on TV ... the whole thing makes perfect sense. And since when would the Pentagon, stand up and say "yep, that was one of ours ... a MIRV'd Trident shot from the pad on San Nic (or from a Boomer off the island and monitored by the land-based station)?"

So could it be a simple miscalculation as to sundown? Someone forgot? A message to others? Where was the downrange target? For NORAD and the Pentagon "not to know" would be one thing, but also guaranteed they know to within a few yards of where that payload splashed.

But what if ... what if it wasn't the U.S. Navy or SAC doing the shooting? What if, it was the Chinese showing that they could sneak a boomer onto the U.S. continental shelf, next to one of America's largest cities, and then popping off a rocket to show that they could do it too? Hmmm? How about that? Obama is widely perceived as a weenie in international power politics anyway, so why not "goose" him a little?  Would we admit that the Chinese could do it? Say the sub was in international waters right between the islands out there -- they they shoot one out over the Pacific: NORAD would know within a few 1000ft of boost that the missile was no threat to the continental U.S., so alerts would be muted, thinking they might have not been told by the Navy.

Or the Russians, for kicks? Right now the Chinese are being very strident about our financial machinations. They hate what the Fed is doing, and their very way of life depends on the U.S. continuing to buy their junk. What if it was a message and WE are the recipients?