09 November 2010

Missile Fired 35 West of L.A. BY Persons Unknown

Somebody fired a big missile 35 miles West of Los Angeles and North of Catalina Island and nobody knows who did it. The U.S. military claims that it wasn't them, and no one else has come forward.

While the U.S. has loose gun control laws, by international standards, including an individual right to bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment, you still need all sorts of permits to launch your own personal missile in U.S. airspace.

So what happened? Does the military have no idea what it is doing with its own missiles (bad), is some private individual shooting off missiles without permission for the fun of it near one of the largest American cities (bad), or is this a show of force from some foreign military force (bad).

It is pretty hard to imagine a non-bad scenario for this happening without the U.S. military knowing about it, and it is also a remainder that realistically, there is no way to find out what is going on in a situation like this one in time to response sensibly.

It is also somewhat disconcerting that about 20 hours later there are no answers regarding how could have fired the missile. I can't imagine that there are a whole lot of people with access to technology necessary to launch missiles off the California coast.

3 comments:

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Update: One non-profit employee military expert thinks it is an airplane contrail that due to an optical illusion looks like it is going up when it really isn't.

But, the government's reassurance that it is nothing to worry about while having no clear what it actually is, stinks of gross incompetence.

Michael Malak said...

Here is an analysis of it being a regular airplane contrail.

http://uncinus.wordpress.com

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Myth busted, no thanks to the U.S. military.