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by LorenPechtel 1746 days ago
There's also the launch from Norway.

Russia detected something rising off the coast of Norway. The performance looked like an older US SLBM. It was heading towards Russia and north--not towards anything important but a viable trajectory for an EMP decapitation attack. What it really showed is how poor their systems were.

The bird was real. It really was an older US SLBM--repurposed as a scientific launcher. It was launched from an island off the coast of Norway--but the Russian systems weren't good enough to figure that out. They also weren't good enough to figure out it was really heading mostly north, basically following the coast. And their bureaucracy had lost the launch notification, probably related to the fact that it didn't have a time on it. The bird was prepped (a good reason to use a solid rocket, it can sit there on the pad for a long time) awaiting the conditions it was meant to study.