You don't always win.

You don't always win

You don't always win

December 8, 2010

Sometimes you make mistakes in life. That's not a reason to quickly erase what you've written. For those who have already seen this page, they can go to the debunking page by clicking on

**this link. **

You will see that the artifact that deceived us, Ellsworth, former Secretary of Defense, my meteorologist friend and me (and in the first days many others, including Michio Kaku), was not obvious. You will find it amusing to discover it.

Moreover, we did not have all the information, only a few seconds of a video that has caused quite a bit of ink to be spilled.

Only fools never change their minds.

That said, this question led me to look a bit into the state of China's armaments, and on this subject, the work was not in vain.

**The page, as I had conceived it in the previous days: **

On November 8, 2010, a KCBS local California television helicopter was patrolling above Los Angeles. It is known that Americans like scenes captured on the spot, such as police chases with criminals. It was 5 p.m. Suddenly, the cameraman witnessed a spectacle that amazed him. A strange object had emerged from the sea, 35 miles offshore, and was rising into the sky, curving its trajectory. He immediately recorded the image.

Here is this video:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xflrzu_mystery-missile-launch-off-california-coast_news

The strange trail appearing in the sky, November 8, 2010, 35 miles from the coast, off Los Angeles

The location of the missile's launch point

**Excerpt from the video. The object adopts a trajectory oriented to the north. **

The plume, followed by this strange plume, a bright point

As can be seen in the video, the journalists went to consult a retired former Secretary of Defense, Robert Ellsworth. Here is his reaction.

"That's quite a condensation trail!" **

It can't be a Tomahawk. It's a big missile **

"In my opinion, it corresponds to the launch of an intercontinental missile, from a submerged submarine"

"It is possible that it is a message to other countries, saying "we know how to do this"

Blogs from all over the world are filled with the echoes collected from there. Asked, the Pentagon, through its official representative, said it could not possibly be an American missile. It is a fact that Americans have repeatedly fired from their Pacific coast towards atolls used as targets, to test the accuracy of their multiple warhead missiles. One of these targets is the Kwajalein atoll.

**Location of the Kwajalein atoll, 2100 miles southwest of Hawaii. ** ****

Here is what the arrival of guided nuclear warheads looks like, 8000 kilometers away

But it would have been out of the question for the Americans to carry out such a launch from a submarine platform so close to the coast, in a region with relatively heavy air traffic. Every time a launch was scheduled, airlines and maritime companies were warned to stay away from the area. Therefore, the hypothesis of an American launch, which had been Ellsworth's assumption, was immediately excluded.

Professor and popularizer Michio Kaku quickly announced that he had changed his mind:

Michio Kaku: "it's a condensation trail of a commercial airplane, seen from a particular angle"

Speaking on the popular ABC network: "I've changed my mind"

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/professor-explains-mystery-plume-california-coast-12105938

Kaku consulted the NORAD (North American Defense System: the system that ensures the defense of North American territory), and was told that the radar monitoring the American sky had not recorded any echo that could suggest a missile launch (but on the other hand, it was impossible for the American authorities to say "it was such a flight". All signals from airplanes in such a busy area are automatically recorded and kept in memory for at least 24 hours).

The second argument put forward by Kaku is the fact that this object changes direction "which missiles do not do" (this man has never seen a movie showing the launch of a missile from a submarine!).

The Pentagon again, confirming the condensation trail theory. "It can't be a missile. If it were, our early warning systems would have detected it, and a defense measure against this attack would have been taken."

Before writing a single line on the subject, I wanted to discuss with my friend Michel Charpentier, a certified meteorologist (retired from Météo-France). This theory seemed suspicious to me. Let him speak:

• *Condensation trails behind airplanes only occur at altitudes around 6,000 to 7,000 meters. At such an altitude, the air is extremely cold. Convection exists, but it is slow as a consequence. *

*- If the air is dry, the trail produced by an airplane can quickly evaporate in its wake. *

*- But if it persists, it cannot spread quickly, because at these altitudes the turbulence is low, due to the low temperature. *

*- Whatever the atmospheric phenomenon that may occur at high altitude, it could not evolve as quickly as was observed in the capture of this video. No one has ever seen a condensation trail of an airplane spread in less than several minutes. *

*- However, in what was filmed, the trail spreads immediately: *

Charpentier concludes that this phenomenon can absolutely not correspond to the natural dissipation of a condensation trail. On the other hand, if it is the gases emitted by a powder-propelled ballistic missile, these are very hot and generate significant turbulence, causing the rapid dispersion of these gases. He thinks, given the brevity of the phenomenon, and this was my own conclusion (I remind you that I was a rocket test engineer at SEPR, in addition to being a graduate of Supaéro), that what the cameraman filmed was a ballistic missile launch.

In that case, who would have done such a thing?

The likely candidate could be China, a country rising in power and recently claiming its place in world governance.

Let us go back to the early 1990s. The Soviet Union had just collapsed. Satellite countries seceded. The empire disintegrated. Russia was in a deep economic and political crisis. By forcing the USSR to follow an arms race that drained it, the United States won the first economic war of the planet on such a scale. The Americans became the masters of the world, and quickly made it known.

It would take years for Putin's Russia to start regaining its strength. But here is a third partner ...