Tuesday News Break

WTF?! A missle launch off the coast of California and no one admits knowing where it came from? Who is running this country? Oh yeah, an inexperienced, clueless guy who split the scene right after his party’s disastrous showing in the midterm elections. Hey, we need some answers here.

The video was captured by KCBS in San Diego last night.

A mysterious missile launch off the southern California coast was caught on video Monday evening by a KCBS news helicopter.

The spectacular contrail could easily be seen up in Los Angeles, but who launched this missile and why, remain a mystery for now….

A Navy spokesperson tells News 8, this wasn’t its missile. He said there was no Navy activity reported in that part of the region.

On Friday, November 5, Vandenberg Air Force Base launched a Delta II rocket, carrying the Thales Alenia Space-Italia COSMO SkyMed satellite, but a sergeant at the base tells News 8, there have been no launches since then.

Some speculation from conservative blog Hot Air here They link to Danger Room:

Someone semingly launched a mysterious missile 35 miles off of the California coast last night — just west of Los Angeles and north of Catalina Island. But anyone in the military knows who did it, or what the hell the thing was, they haven’t told me yet.

“We’ve checked and confirmed — this is not associated with any Navy operations,” says sea service spokesman Lt. Myers Vasquez. Who knows, the thing might only look like a missile – but turn out to be something else.

“Several different offices are looking into it,” says Anthony Roake, a spokesman for Air Force Space Command. “I’m reaching blanks with the folks I’ve talked to.” U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, the and Missile Defense Agency sources are similarly stumped.

In an odd statement, U.S. Northern Command says it’s “unable to provide specific details… [but] can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military.”

What the heck is going on here? Via an update to the Danger Room post, naval analyst Raymond Pritchett says the lack of information provided by the government is a security risk in itself.

When someone makes an unannounced launch what looks to be a ballistic missile 35 miles from the nations second largest city (at sea in international waters), and 18 hours later NORAD still doesn’t have any answers at all – that complete lack of information represents a credible threat to national security. If NORAD can’t answer the first and last question, then I believe it is time to question every single penny of ballistic missile defense funding in the defense budget. NORTHCOM needs to start talking about what they do know, rather than leaving the focus on what they don’t know.

If this missile was launched at sea, was it launched from a ship or sub? If it wasn’t our ship or sub, then whose ship or sub was it? Did anyone cross-reference the launch with public AIS logs from the port of Los Angeles yet? How many dozens of times have we had someone give Congressional testimony regarding the scenario where a non-state actor launches a short ranged ballistic missile from a ship off the coast?

I raise that last point to note, if the mystery missile didn’t come from our military, you have to start looking for alternatives… and most of those alternatives are a threat to national security.

Any ideas?

Here is a less surprising story from the Obama Times: No Charges in Destruction of C.I.A. Interrogation Tapes
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