[meteorite-list] Navy Launches Second Test Missile Off Southern California Coast

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-second-missile-launch-pentagon-20151109-story.html

Navy launches second test missile off Southern California coast

A light created by a naval test fire off the Southern California coast 
was seen across the Southland and Arizona on Saturday evening.

W.J. Hennigan
Los Angeles Times
November 9, 2015

The U.S. Navy said it launched a second -- and final -- missile in a planned 
exercise Monday afternoon from a submarine off the Southern California 
coast.

The second test launch of the Trident II (D5) missile from a ballistic 
submarine in the Pacific Ocean took place Monday afternoon, the Navy said. 
The blast-off took place to far less fanfare than Saturday night's launch, 
which provoked residents from San Francisco to Mexico to take to social 
media, posting photos of an eerie-looking bluish-green plume smeared above 
the Pacific.

Speculations were wide-ranging, including rumors of an otherworldly alien 
UFO visit. In fact, the streak was generated from the Trident missile's 
rocket motor.

The Navy later confirmed a ballistic submarine launched an unarmed Trident 
II (D5) missile in a test flight, but would not define the window of time 
available for conducting additional launches, nor would it disclose where 
the exercise was actually taking place.

"It's important that we test these missiles for our national security," 
said John M. Daniels, spokesman for the secretive Strategic Systems Programs 
office, which oversees the Navy's nuclear-tipped missile arsenal. "We 
don't announce future launches, but this is it for any time soon."

The Kentucky, the ballistic submarine, conducted the two launches as part 
of a demonstration and shakedown operation, or DASO, process that certifies 
the readiness of a submarine's crew and strategic weapons before returning 
to operational availability.

It occurs after a submarine has its mid-life nuclear refueling, which 
involves replacing the expended nuclear fuel in the submarine's reactor 
with new fuel. The Kentucky entered Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, 
Wash., in February 2012 for an overhaul that ended in April.

The Navy is considering posting additional photos -- and possibly video 
-- of the missile launches after the current exercises are completed, 
Daniels said, but it has yet to decide.

The Navy's fleet of 14 ballistic submarines can each carry 24 Trident 
missiles, each tipped with 14 independently targetable thermonuclear warheads. 

The Navy annually tests the Tridents, on the West Coast and on the East 
Coast, near Florida.

The $31 million missile, built by Lockheed Martin Corp. in Sunnyvale, 
Calif., has had more than 150 successful launches since its first test 
in 1989. It is capable of hitting a target 4,000 nautical miles away.

The test on Saturday featured the launch of a missile outfitted with a 
dummy warhead toward the Kwajalein Atoll, a missile test site that's part 
of the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific. 

While the risk of nuclear confrontation between the United States and 
Russia declined after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, it has never 
gone away.

The U.S. military's nuclear weapons strategy rests on a triad of delivery 
systems - bombers, submarines and land-based missiles - developed early 
in the Cold War to deliver warheads anywhere in the world.

The Pentagon recently embarked on a $355-billion program for modernizing 
each aging leg of the U.S. nuclear triad over the next decade.

The submarine missile test came late Saturday after Defense Secretary 
Ashton Carter addressed a defense forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential 
Library in Simi Valley about the U.S. "adapting our operational posture 
and contingency plans - to deter Russia's aggression."

"We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot, war with Russia," he said to 
the forum. "We do not seek to make Russia an enemy. But make no mistake; 
the United States will defend our interests, our allies, the principled 
international order, and the positive future it affords us all."