Le faux-vrai-faux tir de missile au large de la Californie

Le faux-vrai-faux tir de missile au large de la Californie

La diffusion de la vidéo montrant ce qui semblait être le tir d’un très gros missile de type ICBM, au large de la Californie du Sud, sans qu'aucune autorité officielle ne soit au courant de la réalité d'un tel tir, suivie de l’affirmation qu’il s’agissait en fait d’un effet contrariant d’une trainée de condensation d’un avion de ligne, suivie de la contestation de cette version devenue aussitôt version officielle, – et voilà un mystère de plus sur les activités de sécurité, réelles ou dissimulées, autour du continent nord-américain. Le site WSWS.org donne une analyse générale, et certes critique, de l’incident et de la version officielle qui a émergé.

WSWS.org note la confusion initiale, le rôle effacé sinon inexistant de NORAD (le commandement de la défense aérienne et spatiale des USA), certains aspects douteux de la réaction du Pentagone avec des affirmations impératives rédigées dans un langage extrêmement vague, etc. Nous empruntons la dernière partie de cette analyse, qui rapporte divers avis très divergents d’experts sur l’incident.

«MIT professor Theodore Postol, a trenchant critic of Pentagon antimissile programs going back to the Reagan administration’s “Star Wars” fantasies, gave an extended rebuttal of the official cover story that an airplane made the contrail.

»He told the Christian Science Monitor, “It’s not an aircraft contrail. That I’m confident of. It looks like a big missile, but who knows what a contrail looks like from long range.” He told the newspaper that a review of the video shows twisting movements consistent with maneuvers that long-range ICBMs perform. The contrail “has the spirals you would see in an advanced solid-rocket missile,” he said.

»Postol explained that the failure of FAA air-traffic radar to detect the source of the contrail suggested that it was a missile, which would move so fast that it would appear only as a single blip on the screen. On the other hand, he said, NORAD would certainly have detected a missile: “There is no doubt that the North American Air Defense Command early-warning satellites would observe this,” he told the Monitor.

»Naval analyst Raymond Pritchett told Wired.com, “When someone makes an unannounced launch what looks to be a ballistic missile 35 miles from the nation’s second largest city (at sea in international waters), and 18 hours later NORAD still doesn’t have any answers at all—that complete lack of information represents a credible threat to national security. If NORAD can’t answer the first and last question, then I believe it is time to question every single penny of ballistic missile defense funding in the defense budget. NORTHCOM needs to start talking about what they do know, rather than leaving the focus on what they don’t know.”

»Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, told the Times of London, “It’s a solid propellant missile. You can tell from the efflux [smoke].” He said it could have been a ballistic missile launched from a submarine or an interceptor, the defensive antimissile weapon used by Navy surface ships.

»One fact that raises additional questions is an official FAA notice to airmen (NOTAM), issued a few hours before the contrail was filmed by the traffic helicopter. It declares: “The following restrictions are required due to Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division activation of W537. In the interest of safety, all non-participating pilots are advised to avoid W537. IFR traffic under ATC jurisdiction should anticipate clearance around W537 …”

»W537 is a large swath of the Pacific Ocean extending southwest from Los Angeles through Santa Catalina and others of the Channel Islands. The FAA notice was apparently created at 12:52 p.m. local time Monday (20:52 GMT/UTC), the day of the incident, but was not to take effect until a three-hour period the following day (2 p.m. through 5 p.m. on Tuesday, November 9).»

dedefensa.org