The Orange County Register posted a story called “Mystery deepens with video of ‘launch’ off O.C.

For two days, readers have been debating the content of a series of images that appear to show a rocket launch — or a jet contrail, or something else — that appeared in the skies off Orange County…

The debate covered many possibilities from jets to submarines, but none was conclusive. Perhaps, most important of all, this debate started…December 31, 2009.

A similar incident this week has re-ignited the same debate.

Tuesday morning, the Pentagon and the North American Aerospace Defense Command were investigating video shot by a news helicopter operated by CNN affiliate KCBS/KCAL showing an ascending orange-colored contrail high into the atmosphere, officials said. A contrail is the visible vapor trail behind airplanes or rockets traveling at high altitudes.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, and California Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Jane Harman — whose coastal districts are closest to the offshore contrails — were at a loss to explain the images.

This time around even a Russian news site is weighing in with their opinions:

An unauthorized ICBM Trident-2 launch is likely to have occurred off California’s coast in the United States. The opinion has been ventured by the vice-president of the Russian Council of Military Experts Alexander Vladimirov.

According to him, this might have been also attest [sic] launch by a private military company.

Blackwater is still in the area, and just received a giant government grant, so they can not be ruled out yet.

My first guess, based on personal experience sailing in those waters, would be that it was a submarine missile launch. I have not looked into it any more than those in the 2009 debate mentioned above, however. That went on for months yet still is unresolved.