An Optical Illusion....

...and a damn good thing too.

Yesterday the blogosphere was agog at the possibility of an "unidentified" missile launch from US territorial waters by an unknown ship.

Good reason to be worried; were such a thing to take place that would certainly qualify as an extremely hostile act by a foreign power, perhaps even an act of war.

Turns out it was... an optical illusion.

Helicopter viewing an aircraft approaching the CONUS gave the appearance of a launch point in the sea as opposed to being merely on the horizon.

Boy I'm glad I didn't post on this sooner. It would have made us look *very* silly if we had.

But if it HAD been a launch... the smoke of the contrail would have been the smoke of war. Truly.

Thank God it wasn't.