Is the Missile Actually an Airplane Contrail?

There is some very good analysis here on whether this is a missile or the contrail of an aircraft.

Other good analysis over at the New Scientist is good enough for Jeffery Lewis to call it a contrail.

A jet contrail viewed from just the right angle looks a lot like a missile launch. There is an actual blog called Contrail Science (How awesome is that!) that is getting slammed with traffic. The overflow site, though, is still up and I think the author, who is an anonymous pilot, has this one dead to rights. And, of course, there is the Jonathan McDowell rule: When in doubt, just agree with Jonathan, who explains

“If it’s coming over the horizon, straight at you, then it rises quickly above the horizon,” he told New Scientist. “You can’t tell because it’s so far away that it’s getting closer to you - you’d think it was just going vertically up,” he says.

The fact that it occurred at twilight would have emphasised the contrail, he adds. “It’s critical that it’s at sunset - it’s a low sun angle. It really illuminates the contrail and makes it look very dense and bright.”

The short explanation is that we don’t see a lot of jet contrails head-on, especially from the vantage point of a helicopter. So, it looks like a missile to everyone else, including former Deputy Secretaries of Defense. But it probably isn’t.

That would explain why no one else in LA saw a missile launch other than the helicopter crew — or, rather, why everyone else from every other angle saw a typical jet contrail — and why DSP didn’t light up like a Christmas Tree.

It makes sense and I think it is the best explanation I have seen yet, but I'd like to know why NORTHCOM can't link it to a specific flight after 20 hours. If I am watching this video and the aircraft is flying towards and over the camera in the helicopter - rather than away from the camera - then the issue being dealt with here is irresponsible media reporting.

After all, the rest of the camera footage should eventually reveal an aircraft that would responsibly explain the contrail images.