Mystery contrail / missile trail
 

Was this a mistake or just a figment of someone's imagination? This is going to take some splannin.

Mystery of the California contrail | World news | guardian.co.uk

Interesting.

That would be creepy/worrying to see.

Navy launch? Model Rocket? For profit Rocket co.?

Not DoD

Mystery 'missile' launch near L.A. no threat to national security, government officials say [Updated] | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times

Sorry can't stream the video right now so I dunno if they talk about this or not, but...

The island out there west of Catalina is San Nicholas, home of the NAS which (among other things) houses a part of the Navy's Space Warfare Division (or used to).

$5 says it had something to do with that.

Weather balloon.

Actually pretty common around these parts... I don't know if Vandenberg is still active but they used to do a lot of launches.

Back when I was a teenager and saw my first one at sunset I thought it was the end of the world.

And then there is edwards AFB.

It was just a streetlamp :)

Or swamp gas.

What is odd is the missile looks to be very low at the start of the video (going off the cloud deck, etc).

It really looks like a Navy surface to air missile like Aegis boats launch. I have seen at least ten go off the rail (showing my age now).

I would be very concerned if it was an excercise and the news helo was so close.

I wish he would have panned left and down!

Seahawk,

Cruise missle?

Call me crazy, I'd bet they're looking at the video wondering how they got caught. Let's see, just off the CA coast....who else would be out there with that capability?

The flight profile looks wrong, as does the boost phase length, but I'm not an expert...CrustyChief should be able to help.

I'm just glad it didn't acquire any airliners!

This is probably going to be like the Air Force 1 fly by in NYC, someone overlooked the fact that the public should have received notification. Simple as that. Probably not the truth but a simple answer.

maybe the Chinese are sending a message that they are pissed at BHO

What about the possibility it's from a Chinese sub? Kind of a brag/message to the U.S. "look what we can do".

Remember a while back they did something along those lines. They fired a missile at one of their satellites in orbit and created one hell of a mess up there. Again as a brag/message "look what we can do".

If that's what it was, we already know about it... or more specifically, we knew about it within seconds of the missile breaking the surface. We know where all their subs are at any given moment.

I've seen many a missile contrail here, but the usual suspects (typically Vandenburg) own up to it. Odd that DoD agencies are shrugging their shoulders. Maybe one the the three letter agencies is not sharing.

Wow, that Ellsworth is some smart cookie. He thinks it could be a missle from a "underwater submarine" to show some power. Ahhhhh, Mr. Ellsworth, the Navy did this same thing over 30 years ago and can do the same thing today over 200 times in 24 hours. I'm glad he is not in charge of any military thing today or he might say a C-130 can lift 10 tons of gear. Brilliant.

latest i heard is that we know it wasn't a foreign government, it wasn't ours and it is too large to be a private missile, we think it was an airplane