A Missile Launched in California Last Night, and No One Knows Who Did It (Update)

Last night, a missile issued forth from southern California, about 35 miles west of Los Angeles, and neither the Navy nor the Air Force will fess up and say that it launched it.

SKYNET? Is that you?

Update: Breaking News honcho Michael van Poppel says that the “missile” is just a lowly contrail; big embarrassment for CBS if so. (via @nickrizzo)

CBS News reports:

A Navy spokesperson told KFMB it wasn’t their missile. He said there was no Navy activity reported in the area Monday evening.

On Friday night, Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, launched a Delta II rocket, carrying an Italian satellite into orbit, but a sergeant at the base told KFMB there had been no launches since then.

A former U.S. Ambassador to NATO speculates that it could be some kind of show of American military might during President Obama’s tour of Asia:

“It could be a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine … to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that,” speculated Ellsworth.

If so, the military is taking a distinctly ‘viral video’ approach to this demonstration. If this is a semisecret military display, Russia may be a better bet than Asia as its audience (says the geek website that thinks it knows better than a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO); on October 28th, Russia successfully launched targeted ICBMs with dummy warheads from a submarine as well as a land platform.

News video below:

(CBS via Soup; title pic lifted from CBS video)