Mystery 'Missile' Identified As US Airways Flight 808 335
sean.peters writes "The mystery missile discussed on Slashdot Tuesday? It was US Airways 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix. An amateur sleuth checked the time against airline schedules, then the following day, checked out a webcam that was trained in the appropriate direction. He found the exact same contrail at the time AWE808 was coming over. The author deals persuasively with a number of objections to his argument."
I don't care. (Score:5, Funny)
My explanation of "It's another water heater from Mythbusters" was far more entertaining.
--
BMO
Re:I don't care. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't care. (Score:4, Interesting)
Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane's Missiles and Rockets, examined the video for the Times of London and said he was left with little doubt. [cbsnews.com]
"It's a solid propellant missile," he told the Times. "You can tell from the efflux [smoke]."
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well, Mr Richardson needs to turn in his editor hat and take up fishing.
Egg, meet Face.
Re:I don't care. (Score:5, Informative)
Experts are wrong sometimes. While the link in the article is slashdotted, her is a similar one that's pretty persuasive: http://uncinus.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/4/ [wordpress.com] Can your expert tell the difference between an actual aircraft contrail at sunset (taken on Dec 31st last year):
http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Preview-20100119-154110.jpg [amazonaws.com]
and what he thinks was a missile:
http://consci.s3.amazonaws.com//skitch/Mystery_Missile_Launch_Seen_off_Calif._Coast_-_CBS_News-20101109-073423.jpg [amazonaws.com]
Here is an actual missile launch: http://www.air-and-space.com/20061214%20Camino%20Cielo/_BEL7403%20Delta-II%20NRO%20launch%20l.jpg [air-and-space.com]
Re:I don't care. (Score:4, Funny)
Would you please quit using facts and reasonableness to explain things like this? I'm sure that we can find a much less reasonable explanation [youtube.com].
Now, isn't that more fun?
And, sadly enough (Score:5, Informative)
Some very reasoned (and funny) commentary on it came from The Daily Show (sad because we shouldn't have to have a comedy show that is better than real news). The CBS chopper filmed the plane for 10 minutes. As Jon Stewart notes ballistic missiles go really fast, like 9,000 miles an hour. That's rather the point of missiles, they go really fast. Even little ones like Sidewinders are extremely high speed but the big ones like SLBMs are just amazingly fast. If they weren't, well they'd be real easy to shoot down, which would kinda eliminate their usefulness. Also there'd be plenty of time to have warning and deal with them.
If this was a big missile it was the slowest missile in history.
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If this was a big missile it was the slowest missile in history.
Don't forget the German V1 from WWII, over two thousand of which shot down by propeller planes. Missiles don't have to be faster than a transoceanic jet plane.
Re:And, sadly enough (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I don't care. (Score:4, Insightful)
The other point is, there's nothing at all here to show that it's not a jet plume. It looks exactly like a jet contrail would look. It looks exactly like contrails seen in the past that people have mistaken for missiles. Why didn't anyone else see the missile if it was really there? What about flight 808 that was passing by at the same time, surely they saw something if there was a missile there?
Of course the conspiracy theorists like to say "then why hasn't the government expended time and money to debunk this?"
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I've often seen sky trails that look like that - initially. Then, while continuing to watch, it becomes clear that they're just normal airliner contrails - with the planes often becoming visible as they pass by or overhead.
To me, it's clear that this trail is from over the horizon - spreading as it lingers. Without the advantage of stereo vision (no 3D at that distance), perspective can play interesting tricks.
Re:I don't care. (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA makes its case by comparing still images of contrails; and the static comparison is compelling. However, Mr. Richardson assessed the motion video of the event.
Watching the video, I was struck by two things: a light source, which could have been either the flame from a solid-fuel rocket or a reflection off the skin of an airliner, and the fact that there was no separation between the object and the contrail. When I watch airliner contrails (way too much free time on my hands), they usually form some distance behind the aircraft and expand over time; they are not so robust immediately behind the aircraft.
I dunno; just sayin'...
Re:I don't care. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen two, very slightly different, angles of the object and the orange light is only present in one of them. Seems to me that a rocket exhaust should be quite visible regardless of the angle, and that it's appearance/disappearance would make a reflection seem more likely. As for the contrail forming right on the object, if it is an airplane most of it's velocity is directly away from the camera. There could be a mile between the contrail and the plane and from that angle it would look like they were right next to each other.
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I've seen two, very slightly different, angles of the object and the orange light is only present in one of them. Seems to me that a rocket exhaust should be quite visible regardless of the angle, and that it's appearance/disappearance would make a reflection seem more likely. As for the contrail forming right on the object, if it is an airplane most of it's velocity is directly away from the camera. There could be a mile between the contrail and the plane and from that angle it would look like they were right next to each other.
Actually, I think the aircraft theory is that the airliner was approaching the camera; the flight was eastbound, coming over the western horizon, and the helicopter was over land. Yes, I'm nit-picking. But at a reasonably high azimuth (45 degrees?), you're not really looking head on at an aircraft.
As for the missile theory, if was pitching over to a westbound trajectory, might not the plume hide the flame from an observer to the east at some point?
Yeah, I'm straining a bit. Occam's Razor favors the airliner
Re:I don't care. (Score:4, Insightful)
Occam cannot apply, without a full accounting for all data. You don't use the razor when data may be unavailable due to concealment by an actor.
Re:I don't care. (Score:5, Insightful)
But you do apply the razor when evaluating whether or not someone is actively concealing data.
There were hundreds of thousands of digital cameras in range of this event, and there's not one image from another angle that clearly shows a rocket launch instead of an aircraft contrail which has been posted to flickr. Is it simpler to think that all such images have been suppressed, or that there simply never were any?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Fair enough. Definitely enough to get one thinking!
Which I believe, ought to be the point of this. Discarding face-value acceptance of statements about military denials, blogger observations, etc.
It is important to fully understand that every piece of received information - not directly witnessed - is presented through one or more intermediaries. Each of these MEDIAtors comes with a certain bias: conscious, unconscious, benign or malevolent, veracious or mendacious.
Often enough, we reach for the answer t
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pics or it didn't happen
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Re:I don't care. (Score:5, Informative)
Regarding the motion, did you notice the rapid acceleration? The staging events? The motor burnout after a couple minutes?
No?
Well good, because they weren't there. These are all characteristics of big solid boosters. A shuttle SRB burns for around two minutes with no staging; a Trident for about 170 seconds, with two staging events. Any solid rocket will accelerate rapidly; it has more-or-less constant thrust while the vehicle mass drops quickly as its fuel is expended as exhaust.
The cameraman said he tracked this object for ten minutes. There is no solid booster anyone knows about that is big enough and slow enough to have been visible to him for that long.
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You're seeing it very foreshortened, and, yes, they can be very robust right behind the aircraft. For fuck's sake just do a google image search on contrails. This shit is not difficult. You have a vast network at your fingertips!
Here: A jet with the contrail practically crawling up the engine's exhaust.
http://www.kadiak.org/joe/contrail.jpg [kadiak.org]
And here the individual trails merging:
http://www.lifeonperth.com/uu772contrail.jpg [lifeonperth.com]
THIS TOOK ME 20 SECONDS!!!!
I dunno; just sayin'...
Just stop it already. 20 years ago the geek community would
Military Report: Secretly Recruit or Hire Bloggers (Score:4, Interesting)
A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested "clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers."
Since the start of the Iraq war, there's been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs -- and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops' time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.
This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, "Blogs and Military Information Strategy," [cryptome.org] offers a third approach -- co-opting bloggers, or even putting them on the payroll. "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering," write the report's co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/report-recruit/ [wired.com]
Re:I don't care. (Score:4, Interesting)
Experts can get things wrong. Doctors make mistakes all the time, albeit with higher consequences. In anycase, every aviation expert I've talked to said they thought it was a contrail.
Re:I don't care. (Score:5, Funny)
"It's a solid propellant missile," he told the Times. "You can tell from the efflux [smoke]."
So this raises the question: Who attached a solid rocket booster to US Airways flight 808, and more ominously, why?
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More entertaining than the possibility that a foreign power had launched a secret missile test from 35 miles off the coast of California?
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No, they glued pop rocks to a cluster of mentos and put it into a keg of diet coke. I know because I started that myth specifically to see it tested on mythbusters and see if it could start some type of "99 red balloons" scenario.
No, no (Score:4, Funny)
He's a part of the conspiracy. It's a cover-up, and I will argue it as such for decades to come. Because that's the only thing that makes sense.
Slashdotted? (Score:2)
Re:Slashdotted? (Score:5, Funny)
NO CARRIER
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I didn't know Candlejack was also steali
Re:Slashdotted? (Score:5, Informative)
from blog.bahneman.com:
[Update: CBS2 in New York has a story about a similar event over NYC November 10]
I wonder if I'm the first to call it, the reported unexplained missile launch off the coast of California, was US Airways 808.
I did a lot of extrapolation of what flights could be at the right position (off the coast) at the right altitude (for contrail formation) and came down to two possibilities: UPS flight 902 (UPS902) or US Airways flight 808 (AWE808).
As I was researching tonight (24 hours later), I realized that today's AWE808 current position (at around 4:50pm) was almost the same as it was the day of the incident. I quickly pulled up a Newport Beach webcam and found tha (apparently) AWE808 was making an identical contrail, 24 hours later!
Picture 6.png
Compare the above webcam image to the KCBS footage:
Picture 12.png
The comparison is quite clear. A remarkably similar, less-hyped, contrail created by the same flight almost exactly 24 hours later!
So, based on that, and the flight track of AWE808 24 hours earlier, I believe the mysterious missile off the coast of California on November 8, 2010, was in fact the contrail of US Airways flight 808, a flight originating in Honolulu , HI (PHNL) and ending in Phoenix (KPHX).
Picture 7.png
I'm about 80% certain this is the right flight, though UPS902 is still a contender.
For some additional explanation of this non-event, take a look at the Contrail Science blog.
Other theories I've seen that explain this:
* Accidental missile launch
* Target for Airborne Anti-missle Laser Test
* Chinese-made Russian-designed ICBM
* Russian/Korean/American/Chinese "Show of strength" during Obama's tour of Asia
* Chemtrails
* Submarine-launched missile
* F-22
I respect that people will see what they want to see, particularly when it lines up with their interest. Military missile men will see a missile. Conspiracy fans will see a conspiracy. Military pilots will see an fighter jet. Myself? I'm an aviation photographer who also dabbles in weather and atmospheric phenomena. So I see a commercial airliner and its contrail, however, I also believe that this is an excellent example of Occam's Razor: "the simplest explanation is more likely the correct one."
There are a number of variables involved here:
* Altitude, exact time of day, direction and magnification of the KCBS news helicopter footage
* Direction and field of view of the Newport Beach webcam
* Exact positions of AWE808 or UPS902 when the video was made
With those variables nailed down, in conjunction with the sun angle, an expert should be able to pinpoint exactly, the trajectory of the object. Meteor experts extrapolate this kind of information on almost a daily basis in their tracking of meteor or satellite debris entering our atmosphere.
Some commonly commented concepts
(My responses to these are my opinion. I'm not a meteorologist or aerospace engineer).
- The "base" of the contrail is too wide, it should be narrower, like a road as it leads to the distance
You would naturally make that assumption. However, a contrail, at 39,000 feet is often subject to high winds. Depending on the velocity and direction, it can spread out contrails in a matter of minutes. (These contrails often turn into feathery cirrus clouds.) The contrail created at the distance where it appears to meet the horizon has had sufficient time to spread out with the wind. Remember, the distance as viewed through a zoom lens appears to be shorter due to an optical affect called "foreshortening".
- The object clearly had a bright, solid rocket-like engine flare
I attribute this to the sun reflecting off th
TFA is already /.'ed (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe the object was his web server lifting off into space?
Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:3, Interesting)
Deny deny deny. Obfuscate and confuse the issue. Introduce an alternative theory. Have "independent" expert validate alternative theory. Never admit truth. Wait for public to forget incident.
It works all the time.
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
So I'm assuming you'll provide a decent, sane way to falsify your hypothesis? Or are you just going to reject every amount of data as possibly (sorry, I meant obviously) being tainted by THEM and part of your scary scary conspiracy?
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
I was flying on a plane once, and we we just above some big, fluffy clouds. I looked out the window and saw a dark, oval shape, that almost looked like a flying saucer in the distance. I stared at it for about a minute or so, wondering "What could that possibly be?", then looked away; when I looked back, it was gone.
Therefore Barack Obama is an alien sent to enslave humankind.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that you can verify. You can look up the what time this flight left. You can use a bit of deductive reasoning, a little bit of knowledge about flight paths, and the publicly available Standard Instrument Departures for the given airport to figure out an approximate location and altitude that the plane would be at a given time. You can even, apparently, if the summary is accurate, look back at random webcams that were pointing in the right direction at the right time to see if the plane is there and leaving a contrail.
So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?
So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.
Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely, the FAA and DoD just aren't organized for this kind of investigation. If you had gotten on the phone with the FAA or an AFB while the thing was in the air and said "What the heck is that? It's tracking heading 270, at somewhere between 20 and 30 thousand feet", you would could have gotten the answer instantly: "identifies as flight 808 out of LA". As it is, it seems like no one was really interested in this until it got put on the news that night, well after it would beyond radar range. So far as I know, the airports and Air Force bases don't keep recordings of their radar tracks, they have no way to look back at what was happening at that time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So all webmasters all over the world are expected to keep logs of all tiny details and all files requests for months if not years to come from thousands if not millions of visitors per day.
And the FAA don't keep logs of what happens in radar range?
Yep, it's a crazy world alright.
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
Air traffic control certainly does keep "tapes" of radar signals. Whether it is really a tape or some other digital recording is irrelevant. These tapes are often used to help locate missing aircraft. After a plane is reported missing they can often "replay the tape" and identify the point of last radar contact, even for non-transpondered or VFR targets.
This, of course, takes resources and time.
As for the GP who talks about using "Standard Instrument Depatures" for an airport to locate a plane, ummmm.... A SID for Honolulu (departure airport) will have no relevance to the location of any aircraft by the time it hits the west coast. SIDs apply only close to the airport (<30nm in most cases), until a plane gets onto one of the Victor or Juliette (low level and "jet route" high level) airways.
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:4, Funny)
30 nanometers is pretty close
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I'm sorry, but a SID for Honolulu Airport will have absolutely no relevance to finding the location of an aircraft by the time it gets near the west coast of the US. The furthest a SID covers from PHNL that I could find is about 200 miles. The most likely one goes 54 miles out. The distance to the mainland is 2500 miles. In general, some SIDs are as simple as "fly v
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Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the DoD have had a bit too much experience with the public rushing off to some half-baked conclusion, so they ignore the public in events that don't raise their alarms.
I mean, it's not like the DoD hasn't had to put up with the hundreds of UFO sightings a year that get generated in the USA. If these UFO sightings were just "I couldn't identify it" then perhaps they wouldn't be so dismissive; but, when the sightings are more in line with "What do you mean it's not an INVASION from OUTER SPACE! You'
Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not bizarre. It depends what you presume.
Presume the DoD *did* do it. Ok, then they should be able to get an answer out pretty quickly. You know, a cover story or whatever.
Assume they *didn't* do it. They obviously aren't paying much attention. Nobody on watch called the DoD and said "Hey, just want to let you know, a jet just left a contrail. Thought I'd notify you." So the DoD know they didn't do it, assume it is not a missile, and thus don't care. Why assign someone to look into it? They DID give a public answer, didn't they? Or at least, parts of the armed forces did: they denied it. That's an answer, isn't it? It's not necessarily up to them to investigate, quickly, every single jet contrail that someone says "ahhhh it's a missile launch!"
So if you presume the DoD didn't do it, then 36 hours isn't bad. Apparently, the media doesn't really care. Afterall, a "it was a jet flying a normal pathway" story isn't going to sell much. On the other hand, a "secret missile test [in broad daylight]" story is a good seller.
So maybe: the armed forces/DoD/Pentagon didn't do it. The news media don't care because they realize they didn't do it, and a story about a jet taking off isn't very interesting. So it only took 36 hours for a random guy to put all the pieces together and give a good answer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?
So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.
Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.
The comments in the original slashdot story had people saying it was the contrail of an airliner. I believe someone even linked to someones blog who had done a lot of leg work and found that it was flight 808 and even compared it to a similar sighting on 2009-12-31. For some reason the news media didn't want to actually investigate this even though all the facts were out there.
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So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.
Alternatively, you consider that the government is -so- incompetent that they scheduled a secret missile test right when there would be a plane scheduled to fly along that same trajectory. The missile actually failed to get off the ground, and it just took the government 36 hours to realize it never left and they too were actually looking at a plane.
After dealing with the DMV, I consider this the most likely explanation.
Insightful? Who is modding these days? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why would the military perform a missile launch to beat their chest then deny that they did it?
It was to be announced at the next Party Congress. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
Dag-nabbit. (Score:5, Informative)
The picture fooled me, too.
And I ignored myself when I wondered why the plume wasn't all twisted up. Missile trails go through the different layers of atmosphere and pull in different directions. Like this:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/17/article-1214076-06756E3E000005DC-858_306x438.jpg [dailymail.co.uk]
Re:Dag-nabbit. (Score:4, Informative)
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That was just sloppy editing.
Yup, shows how easy it is to fool people (Score:2, Insightful)
What however I usually find most intresting is the story behind the story.
Why did it take this long and an amateur to figure it all out? Why wasn't CBS called within minutes of the airing that this was nothing, that aircraft X flying from Y and landing at Z at XX:XX was it, that radar had it on track the whole time and that this flight passes over daily and does pretty much the same thing?
It shows a kink in the line of communication somewhere that this was cleared up almost immediately. And no, I am not
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It shows a kink in the line of communication somewhere that this was cleared up almost immediately. And no, I am not saying the US military HAS to answer every question, but when a story breaks out like this and reaches around the globe, the military should have a better answer then "we don't what it is, we are fairly certain it wasn't our missle, but what it was, we don't know".
It took the Air Force 18 years to tell itself and its commanders that UFOs were just optical illusions and weather balloons. An
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Not always I can tell you that a shuttle launch looks a lot like that was shown. ICBM test flights and Probably SLBM test flights will often corkscrew early in flight to eat up some range.
What no one is getting is that this almost as worrisome as if it was a missile.
That plane was coming into the US from from the Pacific Ocean. It crossed into US airspace from outside US airspace. Yes I know that Hawaii is part of the US but our airspace doesn't extend the entire distance.
So why did it take the DOD and FAA
Re:Dag-nabbit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on what you mean by air defense. If you mean an automated system that can shoot down ballistic missiles then no. There has been work on that off and on, that's what the whole "Star Wars" project is/was. However nothing operational at this point, or at least nothing that is admitted to (and that is the kind of system where publicly admitting it is useful).
In terms of defense against air attacks? Yes, tons. The US has a bunch of air bases all around its borders. The Air Force and Air National Guard operated bases in most states with fighters (F-16s and F-22s mostly) to deal with threats. In terms of tracking incoming craft, that is done on a continuous basis by massive radar installations. The PAVE PAWS radar arrays provide complete coverage of the US borders out to very long distances (like 3000km). All inbound craft are tracked and known.
So what's the deal here? Well the deal is nothing happened, that's what. There was nothing out of the ordinary so nobody noticed anything. All commercial flights are well known. They file flight plans, keep ground controllers appraised of their progress, and show up on civilian radar. See the radar you get at airports actually isn't normal radar. It doesn't track any object in the sky, it is Secondary Surveillance Radar. Rather what it is doing is looking for transponders. All commercial and private planes have to have one that say who they are. So what happens, more or less, is the radar says "Hi who are you?" and the plane responds "This is my callsign." Works great and makes tracking much easier, you don't have to have someone analyze the radar signals to tell if they are real returns or not (radar can get returns off of birds, air currents, etc if the power is high enough) and you can keep easy track of what everything is.
A plane that has an active transponder and a known flight plan is nothing out of the ordinary. There are thousands a day. So nobody takes any notice, that is shit working how it should. So when the military was asked "Did you do this?" they truthfully answered "No we didn't." When the FAA was asked "Did you see anything weird?" they again truthfully said "No we didn't." Because neither had seen anything weird, no evidence of any problems, they didn't go digging. The military isn't going to go all crazy because there is a picture of a contrail. The PAVE PAWS in Beale didn't see anything problematic, who gives a shit?
I am guessing IUSS was also clear of any unknown subs and so on.
Nobody noticed anything because there was nothing to notice, except visually, and neither the DOD or FAA check that because it isn't useful. Everything in terms of monitoring was fine. They may have opened an inquiry in to what happened so they could give people an answer, but that can take time since it isn't high priority and you want to give a correct answer. Or they may have just not given a shit since it was clearly just someone who'd snapped a picture of a jet and didn't know what it was. They knew it was NOT a missile as that would have been tracked.
Re:Dag-nabbit. (Score:5, Funny)
Reading your well articulated post has had a quite calming affect. Your logical and reasoned argument is beginning melt away the conspiracy theory tension in my shoulders... and I think it is lowering my blood pressure.
I don't like it. Get the fuck out of here :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How could they do that with only a vague description of the location and direction?
They did check their radar records and found nothing.
Not the newsies, fortunately.
Why should have it been easy to check on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know how the radars track things? Do you know how the data is stored an analyzed? Do you know what procedures are in place for answering civilian inquiries on this? If you don't know, and it is clear you don't, then why should it be "easy"?
What you are doing more or less is arguing from ignorance, you are doing the same shit stupid managers to do IT and developers all over: "I don't understand how this works so I assume it is easy, and I get mad that you cannot deliver it to me easily and quickly." You know fuck-all about what you are talking about, so you just assume it should be "easy" and that they are either incompetent or evil because they won't just pop off an answer straight away.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"The military and FAA stood up professional public-affairs personnel who, instead of saying "this is a commercial airliner that we knew was coming and have a track of in our logs", or "let me make a phone call", were prepared with and delivered "we don't know."
Which, come to think of it, bugs the fuck out of me."
It bothers you that professional public affairs personnel told the truth? You would have preferred that they speculate? Seriously?!?
I suggest that you watch less television. It's rotting your bra
Re:Dag-nabbit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, the idiot content on Slashdot never ceases to amaze, especially for a site where the users value themselves as being smart geeks. A statement like that only makes you look like a colossal moron with regards to air defense, and to the events of 9/11 themselves.
The whole reason that worked as it did was precisely because it was a terrorist act, using civilian airliners. Nobody realized anything was wrong until it was too late. Why? Because they were supposed to be there. These were scheduled commercial flights, they were squawking idents, everything seemed fine. The US does not go around shooting down all commercial airline traffic, for good reason.
All that has absolutely nothing to do with air defense in terms of hostile craft coming in from outside the borders, which is what is begin talked about. If an airline enters US airspace and it isn't scheduled and/or isn't transmitting ident as it should, some fighters will come to meet it. Actually they meet it long before it gets to US airspace, when it got to US airspace would be when it would get shot down.
This happens all the time with Russian Bear bombers. In a silly "Our military penis is as big as your military penis," game, they send Bears over to the US coast. They are traced by PAVE PAWS, and F-16s fly up to escort them. They fly around, and then return home. Nothing comes of it because they aren't breaking any rules, however if they continued towards the US and breached US airspace, they'd get splashed (Bears are designed to carry nuclear weapons).
If the difference between that and 9/11 aren't apparent to you, well, then I don't know what to do to help you.
Re:Dag-nabbit. (Score:5, Informative)
Stand behind it all you like, just proves you don't know what the fuck you are talking about. The original question was US air defense. I pointed out what air defense capability the US has, which is extensive and you can easily go and verify those claims. You then claim that a terrorist act shows that the US does not have air defense. That is a stupid statement.
Again, the reason it worked was because they didn't realize what was happening until too late. When the first tower was struck, everyone thought it was an accident. Accidents happen. It isn't like they called it to ground control and said "We are hijacking the plane, we've hijacked three others." When the second plane struck, people realized it was an attack. At that time the FAA ordered all flights to check in and land. The air force didn't start just shooting planes down left and right because they were CIVILIAN AIRLINES with people on them. They were able to determine that the other two had been hijacked. Too late for the one that hit the pentagon (it isn't clear if they figured it out before or after it hit). However for the final flight, it was determined it had been hijacked, and the order was given to shoot it down. The plane crashed before that could happen.
So seriously, if you are actually interested in the US's air defense capability, go research it. There's tons online, none of the broad information is classified. If you just think a single incident means there is no defense, well then you are an idiot. Even had it been a military failure, like say a hostile jet came in and attacked something, that STILL doesn't mean that there is no defense, it just means there was a failure.
Re:Dag-nabbit. (Score:4, Insightful)
You have 20/20 hindsight right now. You KNOW that those airliners were hijacked and you KNOW that they were going to cause more destruction than just flying around. What was known at the time of the incident was far different than what you know now.
Following 9/11, in Chicago, there was an incident where that guy was trying to light his shoes. I was working in the suburbs at the time, and recall hearing a pair of air cracking booms out of nowhere. When the confusion was settled and the news was revealed, it became apparent that those booms were a pair of fighter jets tearing into Chicago airspace to play escort to that airliner.
To me, that tells me that we were and are capable of responding appropriately to air defense even within the borders of the US. What it also tells me is that, if anyone knew that those planes were hijacked before they hit the towers, they probably expected them to be flown elsewhere, not used as weapons. Don't forget that the terrorists knew how to fly a plane, and once in control of the cockpit, it is unlikely that any radio communications would have indicated a problem. Only flight position would have betrayed a problem, but as you may recall, we've had airliners overfly their landing site and continue for .. what, an hour or two, without communication, before a response was sent.
Its easy to see problems that have already happened. It's less easy to see problems before they occur.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are humans in the loop, yes. That's by design. But this is not a prototype. It is a fully operational battle station.
Oh yes, if that had been a missile, and it was headed this way, it would have been detected and stopped.
Re:Dag-nabbit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't fool me for a second - because it looked pretty much like a contrail and exactly nothing like a rocket launch.
What we have here is a classic case of sensationalism and the power of suggestion and preconceived notions over common sense and stopping to think. The news said it was a missile - and a lot of people became convinced it was a missile rather than asking themselves whether the news was right or not. Even a lot of otherwise intelligent people went along with that conclusion because it agreed with their anti-government/pro-government-conspiracy beliefs.
Chinese missile from a submarine. Period. (Score:4, Funny)
Therefore, it was a missile. Chinese. Communist party. War tensions abound. Obama is negotiating terms with Hu Jintao at this very moment, supposedly over the econonomic issues. Saving millions, billions even! from certain death.
Weather balloon (Score:3, Funny)
It's gotta be a weather balloon that just happens to be shaped like a missile.
Airplane Contrail? (Score:2)
Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Didn't this appear to rise from the Pacific?
This morning I watched a contrail appear to rise from central Wisconsin...
Server down, contrail explanation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly you've never flown on a discount airline. They can't even afford peanuts, so do you think they can afford engines?
Re:Server down, contrail explanation? (Score:4, Informative)
Sometimes, they merge very quickly into a single contrail, and his argument is that this is the case, and the angle at which the photo was shot at doesn't allow you to see them merge.
With all our technology... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I assume that by "we" you mean CBS news.
I think that's what people forget (Score:3, Informative)
If indeed this was just a commercial flight, as it seems to be, the whole reason nobody noticed is BECAUSE it was just a regular commercial flight. Those what two things that make them of no interest:
1) A filed flight plan. They tell ground controllers where they are going and when. That means that their appearance there is nothing to worry about, and barely anything to take note of. You only take note if they AREN'T there.
2) A transponder. Civilian radar doesn't detect objects by direct radar returns, it d
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think "handheld camera" qualifies as "all our technology."
I won't say I told you so... (Score:2)
...the hell I won't.
Well, obviously wasn't a missile (Score:2, Informative)
Missiles move a lot faster than that. Looking at ICBM speeds [wikipedia.org] it appears that they typically move their first 150km to 400km at 7km/s and the last 100km at up to 4km/s. The longest phase (the intercontinental part) is claimed to be typically about 25 minutes, which is also obviously damn fast.
Now, you can give or take there but the guy who originally shot the video said that he looked at it for about 10 minutes. Using any of those speeds, 10 minutes would be 4200km, 2400km or about half of a flight from one
Plane Finder (Score:4, Interesting)
I was going to say this would been much easier if the Plane Finder AR iphone and android app wasn't labeled "an aid to terrorists" [techdirt.com] and removed from app stores, but it looks like you can still get it [pinkfroot.com]. There's a web version too at www.planefinder.net
What about the air force? (Score:2)
Isn't anyone else bothered that the military couldn't identify it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The military correctly identified it as nothing of interest.
Re: (Score:2)
Daylight Savings Change (Score:5, Interesting)
No wonder the amateur got the story (Score:5, Insightful)
Wish there are more such amateurs tracking the money and misinformation spread by everyone about politics.
Daily Show (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Streetlight (Score:2)
It's a streetlight!
Oh wait, wrong website.
The Truth (Score:3, Funny)
It's ghouls, I tell you. Religious ghouls in rockets, looking for a land to call their own.
Don't you laugh at me! I know a spell that'll make you show your true form! A cave rat taught it to me.
Re: (Score:2)
There is probably some missile tech at the USN range wondering where the missile he'd left while he went for lunch has gone... he did though hear a loud roar just after he put his lunch bag down on his console.
Re:ok, maybe it's part of this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:space shuttle (Score:5, Insightful)
The battle cry of the uninformed conspiracy theorist...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)