Mystery Missile Launched Near Calif. Has Military Speechless

A missile launch caught by a San Diego news station has military officials claiming they know nothing about it:

From KFMB-TV:

A Navy spokesperson tells News 8, this wasn't its missile. He said there was no Navy activity reported in that part of the region.

On Friday, November 5, Vandenberg Air Force Base launched a Delta II rocket, carrying the Thales Alenia Space-Italia COSMO SkyMed satellite, but a sergeant at the base tells News 8, there have been no launches since then.

News 8 showed the video to Robert Ellsworth, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and a former Deputy Secretary of Defense.

He said it didn't appear to be a Tomahawk missile and said it would be safest to wait for definitive answers to come from the military.

Based on pure speculation, however, Ambassador Ellsworth said, with President Obama in Asia, perhaps this could have been a show of our military muscle.

"It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine [...] to demonstrate mainly to Asia, that we can do that," he said, stressing that it was just a theory.

Gawker's sarcastic comment sums it up: "Sleep well, America."

UPDATE:

The national CBS website has more form Ellsworth.

"It's spectacular… It takes people's breath away," said Ellsworth, calling the projectile, "a big missile".

Ellsworth said test fires in the past from submarines were carried out in the Atlantic to demonstrate America's power to the Soviets, when there was a Soviet Union, but he doesn't believe an ICBM has previously been tested by the U.S. over the Pacific.

UPDATE II:

MSNBC reports:

Senior Pentagon and Navy officials told NBC News that they did not know who launched the missile.

A senior official told NBC News it was "possible" that the incident was an accidental launch by the military. However, the Navy, Air Force and Missile Defense Agency said they had no information to indicate they were involved, NBC News reported.

Military officials told said that a planned military exercise would not have been held that close to Los Angeles.

Officials were also examining the possibility it was a "commercial launch of some kind" or that amateurs had built a device capable of creating such a plume, NBC News reported.

This is a breaking story. Updates will be added.