ILLUSION OR THREAT?

Have you seen that commercial about the cell phone use where every situation ends with someone asking, “Really?”  I especially like the segment where the guy drops his into the urinal and has to fish it out and the guy beside him stares and goes, “Really?”  Well, now that you’ve the jest of where I am coming from on the matter I am about to discuss, hang on to those thoughts…you’ll probably need them.

 

You might remember a UFO incident that occurred a few days back out in the Los Angeles area. There was report of an unidentified flying object sighted rising up into the sky about 35 miles west of Los Angeles, just north of Catalina Island.  A traffic reporter helicopter recorded footage of the sighting and soon it was all over the wires.  Amazingly, this was roughly the third or fourth UFO sighted in the greater LA area this year.  There seems to be a lot going on in the sky around Los Angeles.

 

The frenzy of the media firestorm set off an inquiry with the FAA, NORAD, the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force and well as untold other agencies within the federal government.  No one, absolutely no one in our government had any information whatsoever to share which related to this incident.  I really never thought much of it until I saw the video captured by the helicopter.  At that point, I became convinced that the phrasing I had used earlier which related to the government agencies not having “anything to share” on the topic.  In fact, I must say that I was a bit disconcerted at how easily they blew the subject off as if it were some prank.

 

I was even more convinced that government officials had more information than they were willing to share when they began to openly speculate about the occurrence.  In essence, some of them began to nourish the disinformation side of the equation voluntarily.  The speculation ran the gambit from “it was an aircraft” to the unbelievable notion that it was an “optical illusion”.  In fact, in the end the conclusion offered tended to combine the two notions.

 

The optical illusion conclusion was driven by the findings of the FAA stating that at the exact time of the sighting a U S Airways 757 was approaching and transiting over Los Angeles at high altitude.  Apparently, the contrail was created by the aircraft.  Since the aircraft contrail could be sighted off toward the horizon, it appeared to be rising into the sky as it cruised from the far horizon of vision to overhead.  This accounted for the object in the air and the contrail.  The erratic pattern of the contrail is simply explained as the wind currents pushing the water vapor of the contrail as it is stirred up in the atmosphere.

 

As I said, I viewed the video and then I listened to the explanation as offered above.  You know what my response was?  That’s right, I could not help myself.  I said, “Really?”  Apparently, someone believes that you and I are really stupid if they expect that we are going to follow that explanation hook, line, and sinker.  Oh mind you, there will be some who say, “Well, that clears it up for me” and to that I say, “Really?”

 

Let me say this, if you have not yet viewed the video, I suggest you go to YouTube.com and take a gander so that you can evolve your own conclusion.  With that said, here are some things that I just cannot swallow on this offering.  First, while a 757 does often create vapor or contrails in the sky at cruise altitudes, the aircraft has two engines, not one.  In this case, we obviously only have one contrail coming from the craft.  Secondly, as you view the video, watch closely, near the end you will notice that you can actually see the “afterburner” flame at the far point of the contrail.  Even 757 aircraft with one engine shut down and the other creating a contrail in the atmosphere do not have an afterburner flame emitting from the tail of the engine that is running.  Thirdly, you have to look closely at the contrail and how it appears in the sky.  The trail is somewhat dark as if there is more of a “burning” going on that just a condensation of moisture into the air.  Notice the high altitude contrails of transiting aircraft and you will see they are rather bright white in appearance.

 

Finally, notice the pattern of the vapor trail.  There are points in it marking the rapid movement of the body that is creating it.  There is a distinctive indication of “wobble and spin” as if to say that the craft is making highly erratic course changes or it is operating at unstable levels inducing wobble into the flight path.  This can be characteristic of a missile in flight especially if it is continually homing on a target and reorienting itself by the millisecond. It also could be strong indication of a missile which has lost its guidance and is rapidly becoming unstable in flight.  Either way, it is not characteristic of an aircraft in flight by any means.

 

So, in the final analysis, what was it?  I cannot buy that it was an aircraft of any type either in existence or in the experimental stages.  Given that it was, I have serious doubts that the government would be flying it over the LA metro area.  It certainly could have been a missile and most likely was a missile based on the afterburner flame visible in the video and the erratic high speed flight path.  It was also a relatively large missile, possibly in the class of an SA-7 handheld launcher missile but likely a bit larger.  Obviously it did not explode over LA and it apparently did not crash in Arizona thus it must have climbed high enough into the atmosphere to burn itself up or enter low space orbit.

 

Neither the Navy nor the Air Force claimed to have even fired a missile.  No claims laid even if it was an accident.  Since military missile firings normally require the coordination of more than one person, it is probable that the military would have trouble covering up such an accident and would not even try, although news of it would be quite upsetting to the public.  Missiles can be fired from fighter type aircraft by a single pilot but even those missile types would not compare with this size in this sighting.

 

That leaves a couple of other possibilities.  One would be that a couple of idiots finally found a way to build a missile in their barn and they decide it would be fun to fire it and see if it works.  When it did work as you see in the video, they peed in their pants and ran inside to hide.  As funny as that might sound, I just can’t quite swallow that one either unless the two were former scientists from WhiteSandsMissileRange.

 

The final possibility is the one we do not like to think about.  It brings thoughts to us that we do not want to have.  It is the same feelings we experienced in the moments after the reality of 9-11 set in.  The moments when we realized that it was possible that someone could launch an attack inside the borders of our country.  Those feelings are understandable and they certainly are not emotions that government agencies want the public to experience.  They do not bode well for the officials running our government.

At the same time, this is not a subject that we need to stick our heads in the sands and embrace some hair-brain explanation that stretches the limits of the imagination to embrace.

 

The incident which occurred off of California could have been an attempted firing of a missile in the hopes of downing a large commercial aircraft operating in and around the skies of Los Angeles.  LAX is a strong target because it does process large passenger carrying aircraft on a regular basis.  This incident could have been a dry run not necessarily holding a particular aircraft in its crosshairs but mainly just looking at what the reaction would be then contemplating the odds on getting away with the scenario once the decision was made to carry it out.  It also could have been a real firing aimed at an aircraft but the missile went ‘rogue’ and lost its tracking ability and flew off into oblivion.  Only time will tell.

 

On that basis, I would hope that agencies within our government are going far beyond the explanations offered to get to the bottom of this situation.  If such an incident should occur in the future as a result of a missile firing on a commercial aircraft, it would be absolutely devastating for the commercial airline industry in America.  Neither the industry nor the American people can afford to suffer such consequence.  The agencies of our government must give credence to this recent occurrence and treat it as a serious potential threat to our borders and our welfare.  Otherwise, we may find ourselves watching missiles down aircraft on television and saying, “Really?”

 

 

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