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Thats what DH thinks (its some kind of Trident), he is the one that said it came off the naval firing range at Catalina....he should know.....
If you remember the Tridents have been retro-fitted with UGMs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stillkit
How many unarmed Trident missles do our subs carry?
One or more than one if they are conducting tests.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stillkit
If this were an accidental launch, would not the missle be carrying a warhead?
That depends. Strategic nuclear weapons are always active, but Theater and Tactical nuclear weapons have to be assembled first. The non-nuclear warheads for the UGM 109B and 109C are typically assembled, but the nuclear warheads for those missiles are not, since 1991, they aren't even carried on ships/subs.
Some Ohios have been retro-fitted to replace the Tridents with cruise missiles. That posed a problem for some people because during the first several minutes after launch you cannot distinguish between a UGM-93/133 and a UGM 109B or 109C, because they have the same basic trajectory.
In other words, if you detect a missile launch off of your coast, how do you respond?
Is it a Trident with a MIRV bus and six 470 kt nuclear warheads or is it a cruise missile with one 80 kt variable yield warhead or just a conventional warhead?
Obviously that could lead to an accidental nuclear war.
Go to the contrail science site linked more than once above and scroll down until you come to the eyewitness report of the helicopter pilot who took the original video. He notes how the contrail was "corkscrewing."
That's something you can clearly see in the video. Whatever it was left a corkscrewed pattern well behind itself.
Now, go down to the video contrail science links which shows a corkscrew contrail coming from an Airbus. The contrail does, indeed, corkscrew but it doesn't last long. At the very end, the photographer pans back along the distant contrail and it's mostly straight as an arrow. That's not so for the original video as the corkscrews linger long after the object has gone on.
A couple more thoughts:
Water vapor contrails disperse must faster than exhaust smoke.
Contrail science is just a single person's blogsite which offers no evidence of his having any particular expertise at all. Apparently, he's just a guy interested in contrails.
As I noted before, ballistic missles DO corkscrew as a means of controlling their speed.
In any case, I doubt we'll ever know. We surely will never know if it was a missle.
Saw something on the TV this morning that looked like a solid fuel missile smoke trail. I think it was a test firing of a Trident or equivilant from a submarine. Don't worry about it. The smoke trails from the invading aliens go the other direction.
He also links to another video of the event ("[Update] Here’s a better video").
The Uncinus/Contrail Science contrail expert concludes that not only was it a jet, it was "US Airways flight 808 from Hawaii to Phoenix." But commenters there are not so sure, if only because so much time has passed with no confirmation.
US808 supposedly was already accounted for and if the location of this contrail is accurate, it was 120KM south of the location of the contrail, by folks doing analysis at flightaware.com.
Maybe it was a throng of potheads smoking up on a solar powered ship heading towards International Waters in defiance to the prop 19 vote? (Can't believe California voted that down)
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