What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?

1 - Yubileyniy overview 2012 smallAs readers of this blog or my Kindle Single (or, now, New York magazine) know, I’m intrigued by the possibility that MH370 might have been hijacked and flown north to the Yubileyniy Aerodrome within the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If so, it would have come to rest on the specially-milled concrete at approximately an hour and a half before sunrise on Sunday, March 8. And then what? If it stayed where it was, it would have been easy to spot by land-imaging satellites overhead. To avoid detection, it would have to have either refueled and taken off again, or found some kind of shelter.

As it happens, the Kazakh steppe is a terrible place to hide a 210-foot long, 60-foot-high airplane. The flat, desert plain is sparsely populated and almost featureless, so that anything large and unusual is apt to stand out. There is no natural canopy of trees to shelter under. Though there are large buildings at the cosmodrome where space vehicles are serviced, there are no large structures near Yubileyniy.

After I began developing my “Spoof” hypthesis I spent days scouring first Google Earth, then free commercial satellite imagery looking for any hint that a plane could have been stashed in the vicinity. The pickings were slim. The Yubileyniy complex was built in the ‘80s as the landing site for the Buran space plane, and after the program was cancelled in 1989 it has largely sat disused. Occasionally the runway is used by planes carrying inbound VIPs and cosmonauts, but otherwise nothing has really happened there in decades. An overview of the area is depicted above.

The dark, fishhook-shaped line is the rail line connecting the airstrip to the rest of the Baikonur complex. Alongside it is a road from which a series of driveways lead off to the north. One of them leads to an isolated six-story building that stands surrounded by debris, berms, and trenches. I came to think of the area as Yubileyniy North. Here’s what it looked like in 2006 (click on images to enlarge):

2 - Yubileyniy North 2006

As you can see, the area is desert, where vehicle tracks persist for many years. The six-story building casts a dark, short shadow to the northwest — the sun is nearly overhead. The road from the airstrip comes up from the bottom of the frame and curves to the right. Here and there rectangular patches of debris suggest where buildings once stood. Essentially, it’s a ruin. Here’s the same area, six years later:

3 - Yubileyniy North 2012

Not much has changed. The sun is lower in the sky, so the six-story building’s shadow is longer. But nothing seems to have changed at all. The entire area of Yubileyniy is like this—the place seems have been left to slowly crumble in the desert sun for decades. There’s nowhere to stash a 777. On the other hand, the most recent imagery viewable here in Google Earth comes from 2012. Perhaps something has happened since then? I didn’t know anything about what kind of imagery is available from commercial sources, but I set out to learn. Before long I came upon a company called Terraserver, which lets you view high-resolution satellite imagery for free. I used it to scope around the general area of the Yubileyniy complex, and here’s what I found in an image of Yubileyniy North from October 31, 2013:

4 - Oct 31 2013 small

Suddenly, things are happening. A number of trucks are lined up in the parking lot in the upper-right part of the image. The six-story building is being disassembled. And what looks like a large rectangle of dirt has been bulldozed to the left of the building. The image resolution is so good that you can make out what I take to be the stripes left by the bulldozer blade as it worked back and forth horizontally. At the northern end of the rectangle is a berm which casts a shadow to the north. At the far northeastern corner lies what appears to be a trench with a well-defined corner on the upper right, with treadmarks leading out of it toward the southeast. I’m not sure what this dirt rectangle represents — are they building a pile of dirt, or a hole? — but what really gets my attention is the size of the thing. To give you a sense of scale, I’ve superimposed an equivalently proportioned 777 silhouette onto the image:

5 - Oct 31 w 777

This struck me as interesting, to say the least. Naturally, I wondered what happened next. Fortunately, Terraserver had one more image that I could browse for free. This next one was taken on April 26, 2014:

11 - Apr 26 2014 small

Holy cow. All traces of both the building and the dirt rectangle have been erased. Various debris piles have been swept away, too. At first I thought that maybe the image had been digitally scrubbed, but if you look closely you can easily make out individual pieces of junk in between the cleared areas. So my interpretation is that the site was actually cleared and swept up.
So here’s the situation: nothing happens at Yubileyniy for decades; then, four months before MH370 disappears, the Russians start building a 777-sized something-or-other a mile and a half from a giant disused airstrip. Then, a month after the plane disappears, the area looks like it’s been erased.
What had happened in the meantime? To find out, I had to shell out cash from my own pocket to buy imagery from the main commercial satellite imagery provider, Digital Globe, via one of its resellers—in this case, a company called Apollo Mapping. The cash drain was painful, but at this point I was very far down the rabbit hole. Here’s what Yubileyniy North looked like on December 17, 2013:

6 - Dec 17 2013

The sun is low on the snow-dusted steppe; it’s almost winter. In a month and a half, workers have removed all but the bottom-most floors of the six-story building. You can make out the shadow of a crane projecting to the north from the middle of the remaining structure. A handful of trucks can still be seen in the parking lot. The dirt pile has been extended a few yards to the north; the berm at that end now overlies the what we saw as the sharp corner of the trench in the October image. Beyond the berm lies either a dark strip that could either be a long trench or just a shadow; to my eye the line of brightness at its northern edge implies the lip of a trench, but who knows. Work is clearly continuing. The next image, in black and white, is from three weeks later, January 9, 2014:

7 - Jan 9 2014

Now winter is in full effect. Snow blankets the entire region, and cold has descended: in the four days before this picture was taken, the temperature fluctuated between -15F and +14F. The disruption of the snow cover shows that work is very much underway. The building seems to be down to its last story. Trucks can be seen in the parking lot. I’m not sure what to make of the northern end of the rectangle; two dark strips are visible, perhaps one of them is a trench and the other is the shadow of a berm. Unforunately the resolution is not very good because the image was taken at a fairly low angle. The fact that work is continuing under such harsh conditions suggests a sense of urgency, to my mind; or perhaps these are simply hardy mofos. By the time the next image is taken, nearly two months have passed.

8 - Mar 2 2014

In this black-and-white image, the building has been completely dismantled and the dirt rectangle bulldozed flat. No berm remains at the northern end. Horizontal bulldozer tracks are still visible. The dark dirt is framed with a lighter border, suggesting perhaps a snowy slope. No trucks are visible, suggesting that the work crew has moved on. A color image taken four days later looks almost identical:

9 - Mar 6 2014

This image was taken two days before MH370 disappeared, on March 6. The next one was taken eight days after, on March 16:

10 - Mar 16 2014

When I first saw this picture, my heart leapt. The two scenes, taken just before and after the disappearance, looked so different that I was certain that something significant had occurred in the interim. Perhaps what was a rectangular depression in the March 6 image has now been filled in with sand (along with maybe, oh, who knows, a plane?).
I began pricing out tickets to Kazakhstan and searching the internet for advice on detecting large buried things with metal detectors. I located a Russian from St. Petersburg who’d made a gonzo two-day bike trek across the steppe to reach the Yubileyniy strip and sought his advice on how to get to the area without permission; he told me that he’d camped out at the airstrip overnight without anybody noticing him but then had tried to visit a busier part of the cosmodrome and gotten arrested. After he told them he was just scouting around because he was a huge fan of the Buran project, they let him go. I figured that if I was more careful I had a good chance of making it in and back.
But then I looked more closely, and examined the weather records. It just so happened that during this time interval spring fell on Baikonur like a hammer. On March 6, the temperature had only just peeked above freezing, by the 16th the daily highs had been in the 40s for the better part of a week. The thaw has completely changed the color palette. Everything that was covered in snow, and hence lighter colored, is now sodden and hence darker colored. White plains of snow are now damp brown sand. The darker earth of the rectangle is now drier and lighter-colored. After staring at these images for many hours I concluded that the most likely interpretation is that nothing has changed except for a temperature change.
And so we wind up back at our April 26 image:

11 - Apr 26 2014 small

By now the desert has returned to its normal dried-out state. The cluttered jumble seen over the winter has been replaced by almost featureless swatches of tan. A vehicle track overlies the northernmost part of the dirt rectangle, its borders now smudged and indeterminate.
I showed some of these images to construction experts and satellite imagery professionals, and received very little encouragement. Most likely, they told me, the work being performed was site remediation: a building was torn down, and construction debris thrown in a trench and covered up. As successive trenches are dug and filled in, a rectangular shape is formed. Simple as that.
And yet: the entire cosmodrome is littered with decades of abandoned equipment and derelict buildings, evincing a constitutional lack of interest in the concept of remediation. There is no commercial or residential activity for miles of Yubileyniy. Why, after decades, did the Russians suddenly need to clear this one lonely spot, in the heart of a frigid winter, finishing just before MH370 disappeared? And why is it that the greater part of the dirt rectangle was already laid out in the Oct 31 image, before the building was substantially demolished?
I don’t know. I tried to reach out to people who might know, but had no luck, and eventually I had to turn my attention to projects that might earn me some money. But I’d love to find out. If any readers have any special insight, I’d love to hear it.

UPDATE 4/3/2106: Since I wrote the above, Google Earth has added a new high-quality image of the site, taken October, 12, 2014. It gives a different impression from the last image–it doesn’t look any longer like the dirt was swept flat, like someone trying to cover their tracks.

October 2014

659 thoughts on “What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?”

  1. @The Examinator said, “If the AES was fed dummy data for the opposite path the wrong antenna would have been selected & the AES would never have found a satellite.”

    This is not necessarily true. For this spoof to work, I believe it is possible that only the speed of the aircraft was changed and not the position, although the AES correction algorithm would have to accommodate a wide range of speeds. What needs to match is the residual Doppler shift, i.e., the actual L-band shift minus the AES correction, and as long as this residual has reasonable sensitivity to speed, that is the only navigational parameter that needs to be altered.

  2. If was are going to entertain landings in Kazakhstan, we should also consider the Kyzylorda Airport, which has a long runway, is 12.5 km away from the city of Kyzylorda, and is a better match to the BTO data and the fuel exhaustion model. If this occurred, likely the plane was refueled and flew on.

  3. @Examinator, Great point about the HPA directionality. I’ve been looking at this with Victor; the ideas that the spoof IRS sends correct position data but spoofed velocity data so that the Doppler precompensation is manipulated as desired but the antenna is pointed in the right direction. Perhaps this plan didn’t entirely work out; imperfect antenna-aiming might explain why the telephone calls couldn’t go through.

    According to weatherspark.com, the temperature at 7am on March 8, 2014 in Baikonur was 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Coincidentally, what it was in NYC this morning.

    Sunrise was at 8.13am.

    The Buran used its own kind of complex ILS-type system that wouldn’t work with the avionics that a 777 comes with. But I imagine it would be fairly simple for the Russians to rig up a conventional ILS as required.

  4. I never believed MH370 finished in the Indian Ocean due to the lack of any debris washed up anywhere. On our local beach in SW Australia we get rubbish washing up every day.
    This theory to me seems far more plausible. There is a way you can verify what has happened at this Airport. My background is in 3D modelling & laser scanning\photogrametry. I would suggest someone create some 3d models from aerial & satellite imagery to work out what infrastructure was there and what was demolished. If there is good quality photogrammetry in this area it would be fairly simple to 3D model.
    My hunch is one of the trenches has been used to bury the bodies which would actually be No1 priority. I think they only took cockpit off-site as that would be the real prize of the operation (that gives Putin all the systems to train his black-ops guys. Just imagine if they could hack into any Boeing control system…hmmm)
    As for site remediation…remember the escape tunnels from WW2 Nazi POW camps? Clever people can do very clever things if they have to and I think site remediation is a very plausible cover story hiding the truth. But that site looks to me like a demolition job to hide evidence. The rail line could transport a lot of debris off-site quickly. And the building could temporarily house fuselage pieces if they had hollowed it out. You then bury the cut-up plane and ‘çap’it with a top layer of soil.
    The only issue I have difficulty with this theory is keeping it a secret with so many people involved…unless they have all ‘dis-appeared’ as well(or they contracted in the North Koreans)…and of course assuming Putin is so annoyed with the West he would be this vengeful!

  5. @SignalHill, thanks for your kind words and smart questions. I wound up with March 2 and March 6 kind of by mistake, I was mad at myself when I realized that I’d paid good money for two images that were essentially identical. Then, weeks later, I realized that they weren’t identical — the images were taken from very different angles, so you can get a sterescopic effect. I excitedly made an animated gif out of them and swore I could see the 3-D depth of the hole. But then I did a bit more analysis, with some help from a satellite expert, and decided that it wasn’t a hole at all, but a pile of dirt. I’ve got a bunch of things to do right now but later today or tomorrow I’ll try to put up the gif and maybe as well a link to a Dropbox file with the full sat images. (Then you can examine the runway yourself — the images I have don’t show all the runway, but some of it.)

    As to the order in which the gear would have to be tampered with, I don’t know in any detail. I’m hoping that if this story gets enough publicity some retired Honeywell employee will come forward and tell us all about the details of how the system works.

  6. Jeff:

    Your latest article(s) and the ideas therein have certainly stirred up a new round of “out of the box discussion”. Meanwhile, two more thoughtful fact based analysis have surfaced, both with end points on the 7th arc, one 20NM from the IG point (Stevens) and one collocated with GlobusMax and Ulich’s area (LANL). The fact that all these detailed independent math models all end up on the 7th arc is strong evidence we have this right.

    The fact that the I3F1 satellite is in an inclined orbit provides hard evidence the plane went south. The fact that no debris has been spotted is no evidence of anything other than a likely high energy impact. Many have predicted a high energy impact based on the Inmarsat 0019 data and H01 acoustic data. The fact that 370 has not been located yet is no surprise at all. The ATSB team is nowhere near finished searching the priority area, much less the adjacent “near priority areas”. This is no time to abandon all the hard science in favor of hypotheticals that are unsupported by the real data we have.

    If there are flaws in the search strategy, they are (1) ATSB did not include a large on-station re-supply ship in the plan and (2) the search in the northeast segment of the 7th arc should have been abandoned months ago in favor of extending the search area slightly further southwest. The Inmarsat endpoint was an early best guess that ignored all the human factors and is best discarded at this point. OTOH, the BFO data following the 18:25 logon can be interpreted to support an early turn or a later turn between 18:28 and 18:40. The precise timing of this turn (known as the final major turn, or FMT) explains the difference between the Ulich Group and IG Group end points. Pin-pointing exactly what happened between 18:25 and 18:40 is where we need to focus to help ATSB refine the search.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/wy22bn45r4i8svq/2015-02-24_Map.JPG?dl=0

  7. Even if they succeed in finding the wreckage in the SIO, then what? It is generally understood that it must have broken into thousands of pieces and only a few items like the engines and landing gear may be recognizable. Would there be any clue to what exactly went on in and around the cockpit?
    Further, let us suppose that the FDR and CVR were found.The CVR would record only the last 30 minutes (or is it longer, can someone specify?). Either there was no one alive in the cockpit, or there were one or more people who were well aware of the CVR and maintained silence. Or they would have found some way to stop the CVR.
    And what useful data would you get from the FDR? You would know what inputs were given to the controls-but you still would not know who performed these actions and why. (Would there be any GPS readings in the FDR?)
    If it did end up in the SIO, most likely Zahari was responsible and Hamid was eliminated early on along with everyone else. Or there was something more complicated involving Christmas Island and unloading of whatever they were after, and then somehow sent on without anyone on board ?! Even then there would not be any clue from the fragmented wreckage-and the CVR and FDR would have either been removed or shut down. So nothing will be known unless someone confesses.

  8. Jeff,
    Thank you for your diligent research and efforts to think outside the box. I have always felt that this plane did not travel south but indeed traveled north. With no debris field or any type of debris almost a full year later screams to me – MH370 went north. Please keep your blog updated and I hope more people take your theory seriously and investigate it. Great work!

  9. Since I have no technical background in aviation you may have to suffer through some ignorance. My son and I are right with you on the northward trajectory. Soon after the announcement of the disappearance he put forth the idea that the plane had been taken to a remote location so that it could be repainted and used for an attack. If the weight of the passengers is removed, is it possible to reach southern Iran? Specifically north of Dalgan, approaching from the south. Can the handshakes be reproduced, by say hackers, to relay signals that could be leading away from a northward flight plan? At any rate I am with you that the thing was stolen and flew north.

  10. Re spoofing…As I have stated, the hardware is not all that difficult but the software would be extremely difficult. If it was spoofed, why put the system on the airplane? It would be far easier to spoof the signals with a ground based terminal.

  11. When you westerners are talking about Russia and Russian one thing is for sure: your hatred = your ignorance. And your ignorance is grotesque. So is your hatred.

  12. @JoBlo Whoooooaaa! Man, I’ve spent so many hours staring at those satellite images, to see that site from the ground is blowing my mind. If it is the same site… I’m going to have to go over the sat images again with these in hand. Is there any accompanying text?
    PS, that last image I don’t think is the same building, it’s too close to the runway, I think that’s the terminal building.

  13. I beach combed a lot as a child on the mid-west coast of Western Australia, and know the coast well. Despite what you read about the coastline here being remote and sparsely populated it is very well used. If anything happens in the SIO something always turns up on the coast of WA, as Dutch sailors from the 17th and 18th centuries would tell you. I am far from a tin foil hat wearing moon bat, and I have some minor experience in the aviation industry. Australia is a first world highly interconnected and educated country. If so much as a MAS branded beer coaster turned up on the beach it would not be thrown into the back of the Landcruiser with the fishing gear. It would have been reported. I also have a maths degree, so understand the Immersat calculations. It is my strong opinion that the aircraft is not in the SIO. It would be impossible to ditch there without debris. And I get annoyed at the comments that it would all have sunk by now. In fact I suspect people who push that opinion. It is obvious that there are many many things that float from a broken a/c Nothing has turned up on the WA coast so nothing went down out there. I cannot explain the Immersat calculations but know enough of engineering to trust the physical evidence, or lack of, before I trust an engineer or a mathematician. That is another logical fallacy. Lack of evidence is evidence in Bayesian sense.

  14. @Harry: unless whatever debris there was gets caught in the Antarctic Circumpolar current.

    @airlandandseaman Thanks for that graphic. The LANL point is astounding. As far as I know it’s the only hard evidence of a location on the 7th arc other than Inmarsat. Amazing the ATSB hasn’t run with it, no? I concur absolutely with all you said – The FMT matters a lot. It makes me wonder why the Malaysians seemingly cut off that radar trace on the left when you can infer there is more. Just a few more minutes of radar trace could tell the tale of 18:25.

    @nihonmama: It never ceases to amaze what you can find. Truth stranger than fiction, eh?

    @jeffwise: There are two burial events on the photos: pre- and post- MH370. After the first one, there are clear stockpiles to the north and south ready for the second. Judging by the apparent 5-story building shadow, and the stockpile shadows, these piles are about 15-20 feet high. Unless they brought more fill, the fill over this area is very thin, and any objects buried there would be small, consistent with the flat appearance after final grading. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole: where was the Xue Long on Mar 8, 2014, and where was it before that?

  15. VictorI, Jeff

    ARINC 404 words to SDU via 429 bus = lat, long, speed over gnd, track angle, tru hdg, pitch, roll

    If lat, long, tru hdg, pitch & roll are used purely for BSU then speed & track angle for doppler comp a spoof is workable but can that be assumed?

    Like ALSM suggests, a spoof might be easier to construct on the ground. However, why leave a breadcrumb trail at all?

    TEx

  16. Hi Jeff,

    Very interesting. I think if you are serious about wanting to know if your scenario is true you need to explore more the question of why. Why go to all this trouble, risk (potentially) armed conflict with China and others? If it were to kidnap a person(s), it would be a lot easier to do so without having to steal an entire airplane and involve so many others in doing so. So, one would have to wonder about possible payloads worth the risks and the murder of so many on board. Question, what could have been brought into Malaysia to be smuggled out via your hypothesis? What is big enough, or dangerous enough, that it needs such a delivery method? Weapons (nuclear?), biological agents? Something else? I know you are keen to keep pushing your investigation of the landing site, but I think you should broaden your search back to Malaysia Air and records leading up to the departure of the plane. Where there any irregularities in servicing, special deliveries or requests, breaks in security protocol, anyone involved in the planes departure who would normally not be involved, changes in crew, timelines, flight routes. etc. Also, where was the plane before it left for its final flight? What were its ports of call, could something have been put on board then?

    As for the landing site, have you done any analysis of the tire marks in and around the area? If the aircraft is buried there, one would presume the plane was likely driven to the final resting spot under its own power (for ease sake). Have you looked at satellite data between the proposed final resting spot and the runway looking for tell tale tread patters of a 777?

  17. My google translation says that the white six-story building is a former barracks — are others not seeing that?

  18. @Nobody, I can understand that some might be offended by Jeff’s speculations. But I’m fairly sure his thoughts are not at all driven by hatred of all things Russian. And so far his ideas are not shared by many people anyway – as he freely admits in his New York Magazine article 😉
    @airlandandseaman, thanks for your great and continuing high quality input. I’ve read your and Victor’s contention that – if a spoof happened at all – it could have been done from the ground as well. But why would it be easier? Is there a technical reason, or is it just the fact that a group of qualified people could accomplish it without having to board the plane and risk their lifes?

  19. I read your article on the New York Magazine and then stumbled upon your site. Not that I have a technical background in aviation or anything like that, but I believed from the start that the plane did not go south but instead went north. It’s nice to finally see an article in the news that brings this theory back up. Soon after the plane disappeared, an article came out stating that a plume of smoke was seen in a valley in Kyrgyzstan. A hunch I have in regards to who could be behind it or where it could be lies in the western part of China, in the Xinjiang region. Prior to the plane disappearing, this area of China has been the target to many terrorist attacks done by the Uyghur people which also live in nearby countries of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. I’m sure after researching hours and hours on the MH370 disappearance, you are already very much aware of this too. This region of China borders Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. However, your theory seems quite plausible to me.

  20. I read your article on the New York Magazine and then stumbled upon your site. Not that I have a technical background in aviation or anything like that, but I believed from the start that the plane did not go south but instead went north. It’s nice to finally see an article in the news that brings this theory back up. Soon after the plane disappeared, an article came out stating that a plume of smoke was seen in a valley in Kyrgyzstan. A hunch I have in regards to who could be behind it or where it could be lies in the western part of China, in the Xinjiang region. Prior to the plane disappearing, this area of China has been the target to many terrorist attacks done by the Uyghur people which also live in nearby countries of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. I’m sure after researching hours and hours on the MH370 disappearance, you are already very much aware of this too. This region of China borders Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. However, your theory seems quite plausible to me. All these satellite images as well the ground images are quite interesting.

  21. @The Examinator:
    I agree that a spoof at first pass seems overly complicated. However, if it was accomplished in the air as Jeff suggests, as long as the plane was not flying tangent to the ping arc, changing the value of the speed that is feed to the SDU is enough to alter the BFO to a value representing a southern path. I think there are many problems with the spoof scenario, but I can’t rule it out yet, either–certainly not on the basis of antenna steering.

  22. littlefoot:

    It is all about (1) packaging and (2) ready availability of the required components. It would be relatively easy to integrate an AES along with the required COTS 19” rack mounted digitally controlled microwave delay lines, etc. The assembly would be about a ½ rack and weigh maybe 200 lbs. To achieve the same hardware functionality in a 20-30 lb portable package would be a 3-5 year product development effort with a customer base of 1.

  23. …and there is no need to point the natenna for a ground based terminal. Just use a small axial mode helix and you’re done.

  24. @Jeff: I enjoyed reading the NYMag article – great insight into your journey. Bravo for having the perspective and humility to admit the disconnect between your theory and what your “head” tells you. To me, that actually impels me TOWARD your theory.

    But I’ve now seen enough to feel confident that our best next step is to have the official investigation turn out its pockets. For those of you who haven’t read my report, here are the challenges it set for search officials:

    CONCERN #1a: No reduction in available fuel could possibly necessitate – nor even suggest – moving from the original to the Mar.28 search area. Therefore, the search did not move on Mar.28 for the reason given. Officials are challenged to explain why a false reason was given.

    CONCERN #1b: The current (Oct.8) estimated post-radar range is 7% less than its Mar.17 counterpart – officials are challenged to explain this difference. It cannot possibly be the reason given Mar.28 (“flew faster”): officials knew by mid-March that the primary radar data track forces a definite horizontal speed, with minimal vertical variation.

    CONCERN #2: The location (s21, e104) moved to on Apr.2 could not possibly be the terminus of a direct path which respects all signal data, and reaches the 7th arc before fuel exhaustion. (A direct path is forced by the current search site.) Officials are challenged to specify in full the “highest probability” path to this search site.

    CONCERN #3: Immediately upon moving the search to a place they should have known 370 lacked the fuel to reach, officials hailed as authentic acoustic pings they should have known 370’s black box could not possibly have emitted. Officials should explain how such an egregious error was permitted to misdirect the search.

    CONCERN #4: “US Officials” who confirmed to CNN Apr.14 the co-pilot’s cellphone connected with a tower (directly contradicting the primary radar track, whose speeds force an altitude at which cellphone service is nil) are challenged to identify which (primary radar, cell connect, or both) is the false information, and why they supplied it.

    CONCERN #5: The Jun-Aug search site was the terminus of a path requiring circuity near Sumatra (ruled out by current search site) and/or 400-knot speeds (nonsensical under any (auto-)pilot scenario). Officials are challenged to justify this logic, to dispel concerns these areas were surveyed for reasons unrelated to the search.

    CONCERN #6: Officials are challenged to publish the starting coordinates of drift model scenarios driving the Oct.22 claim that debris should hit Indonesian shores first, and – if those coordinates (as widely expected) conflict sharply with those of the current deep sea search zone – how such a basic error was allowed to misdirect the shore search.

    CONCERN #7: Officials should immediately rectify the performance limit misrepresentation in Fig.2 of the ATSB’s Oct.8 report, extend the high priority search zone to E84 accordingly, and explain how these errors – which bear the hallmarks of having been deliberately inserted – were allowed to misdirect the current deep-sea search.

    This demand for transparency – directed squarely at those who promised it – stands a very good chance of forcing key-yet-hidden data out into the open. As such, I would expect full-throated support from all people truly interested in solving this mystery.

    Hesitation in rallying to this clarion call is not only puzzling, it has already produced needless delays: IG equivocation on Concern #7 alone may have contributed to a THREE MONTH (and counting) DELAY in getting the ships out to the E84 site its kingpins now seem keen to PLUG.

  25. Hi,

    Just read the NewYorker story. Fabulous! My thoughts from the beginning were that the Irainians stole the plane to use it as a flying mussel and it would be hard to place blame on the perpetraters. Or at least it would take some time to figure out. If not them,then pick your terrorist organization also sponsored by guess who? Look forward to following all the great work going on hhere. Thanks

  26. @The Examinator,
    Why leave a trail of “electronic breadcrumbs” at all?
    Do you know the movie “The Prestige” about a pair of rival magicians at the turn of the last century? The intro of the movie explains how a good vanishing trick works. The magician makes a canary bird and it’s cage disappear and explains to his audience (a little girl) that it isn’t enough to make the bird disappear. To complete the trick, you have to make the bird reappear.
    After the plane disappeared by going completely dark, the SDU/AES went on again and the electronic handshakes were produced. So, in a way the plane made a reappearance, though only virtually in the form of the “electronic bread crumbs”. But the pings allowed an explanation of what might’ve happened to the plane: It went down in the deapest parts of the SIO and everybody died. And if it is never found – well, it might’ve been blown to tiny smithereens on impact. This explanation will satisfy most people and nobody will look elsewhere. Highly advantageous if the perps really absconded with the plane to a destination of their choice, no? But without the electronic trail to the SIO everybody would’ve looked for the plane hi and lo.The possibility of a safe landing would not have been excluded at all since there was no evidence for a crash.
    The movie reveils later btw, that the canary was simply crashed and flattened in it’s cage. The reappearing bird was a second one produced by the magician. Without the appearance of the second bird the audience would’ve quickly suspected what happened to the original canary.

  27. @airlandseaman: If only the BFO values were altered as Jeff proposes, there is no need to delay the RF signals. And I believe that the BFO values can be appropriately altered only by changing the ground speed that is fed to the SDU. That simplifies the hardware and software tremendously, and eliminates problems due to incorrect antenna steering due to false coordinates.

    That said, the spoofing scenario still seems overly complicated with breadcrumbs left behind that would have to be correctly interpreted. It is still hard for me to get past why the perps would have chosen to leave breadcrumbs at all, but I can’t say that with certainty.

    My guess is that if the plane flew north, it is explained by our inability to correctly interpret the BFO values.

    There seems to be two camps. One camp thinks the plane must be in the SIO along the 7th arc. The other camp thinks the plane is anywhere BUT the in the SIO along that arc. For now, I will put myself in neither camp and continue to explore all options while recognizing that with the facts at hand, the trip to the SIO is most likely.

  28. Very interesting piece. I hadn’t read anything (like, not even a newspaper article b/c I was annoyed by the coverage) about MH370 until the New Yorker piece and now I’m hooked.

    Re: motive. It can’t be about specific passengers/Freescale employees. I doubt they knew anything that Russian engineers couldn’t learn. Also, it’s easier to just abduct them than to stage a heist of a f’in 777.

    Re: flying along borders. Surely Bangladesh would have noticed? The India-China border must be closely watched by both parties, and then the frontier around Kashmir must also be closely watched. Would be interesting to see a map of air-traffic control zones in this area.

  29. I have no technical or aviation experience so I cant speak to the specific data that is being discussed.

    @Jeff My biggest problem with your theory is why would Russia steal a plane, the majority of which are Asian passengers, to then fly it to a deserted base and bury it under debris made of concrete, stone, wood, etc..

    If Putin really wanted to attack us he would just use a warplane. I dont see the point and or logic in the Russians now digging up this plane and packing it with explosives.

    I am not saying your wrong or that its not a possibility as anything in this case is a possibility, all I am saying is the logic just does not follow or compute to me.

    Furthermore, after this happening I am sure any plane that turns up unannounced in any region of the global air space is sure to be met with immediate company and or its demise.

    I get you are trying to deal with facts but please try to help me understand what the logic of all this would be!

  30. @The Examinator:

    Re –

    “The SATCOM spoof: the idea is that the box of tricks feeds the AES a dummy path using positional data and aircraft attitude for a southerly path, laying a false breadcrumb trail, right?

    In this case the AES wouldnt have regained connection with I3-F1.”

    A recent reply from an ongoing conversation. It may (or may not) be of interest to you:

    “what I was considering…say the AES terminal was programmed to point to a nearby military satellite. The signal wouldn’t be relayed the way it is assumed. All math would be off. Was trying to determine if that’s a possibility. Assuming a no-turn path, the AES would have to relay through a satellite several degrees east of the Inmarsat. Is there a way to prove the signal went through the Inmarsat satellite specifically(?)

    @Littlefoot: Glad to see you back!

  31. @Victor, I tried to explain in my post above – maybe overly colorful – why it would make perfect sense to create a false trail of electronic bread crumbs leading to the SIO. The question is – if such a spoof really happened (and that’s a big “IF”, of course) – how could the perps be sure that people at Inmarsat would really use the BFO and interpret it the right way. I think that isn’t necessarily a huge problem. Jeff’s scenario is more or less a dark op. Who knows what kind of input and little hints might’ve guided the good guys at Inmarsat. Many people were involved in the calculations which were performed under great pressure after all. And Inmarsat and the Russians are intimately connected: Their satellites are transported into space with Russian rockets … at Baikonur of all places. When some of the Russian rockets blew up last year their planned new system of satellites got delayed, as reported in the news and at Inmarsat’s website.

  32. Jeff,

    I am not very sure what things are ‘suspicious’ in the satellite snapshots you found. To me they look as a normal construction site. Why would somebody need to burie B777? Just park in an angar, and cut it into a thousand small pieces during a day or two. There are special cutting machines to demolish and recycle aircrafts.

    Yet you can develop spoofing theory with regard to Diego Garcia – it is propably the closest land point to the Inmarsat satellite. I mean the implication with regard to the smallest possible BTO.

  33. @littlefoot: Yes, I read your comment after I posted mine and I understand your logic of creating a decoy. It just all seems complicated, and complications increase the risk of something going wrong…although more complicated scenarios have come to fruition. That’s why I won’t rule it out.

  34. @jeffWise – I think you might be looking at the wrong place. – i dont mean to troll you in any way shape or form, however my belief is different and based on some other observations. – It was said that 2 iranians were on board “but flying as political asylum seekers in europe” – I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS STATEMENT. Their age was 19 and 21 yrs of age – I have met many iranians during school in europe of which they all told me they were under 18 yrs of age – they left for school in europe because had the males turned 18yrs of age they would be under strict obligation to join the iranian military – therefore i believe these 2 iranian subjects were actually spec. ops for the iranian military. their ages means they most likely had some kind of training within the military – 2nd if you look at the flight – it had enough fuel to fly to iran using an inverse arc opposed to the ones give by the “pros” and this innmarsat lines. i honestly believe it was hijacked and flown to iran using the inverse arc under india. If you google konarak/chabahar iran and check the google maps – they have an almost 2 mile runway there in konarak iran more than suitable for landing a 777.

  35. @GlobusMax:

    “@nihonmama: It never ceases to amaze what you can find. Truth stranger than fiction, eh?”

    Indeed. Thank you. I could share some that would make your hair stand on end. Strange truths are often called ‘conspiracies’. But when the truth surfaces (and it often does), the ones who’ve labeled them as such are the last to know.

    By the way, really liked your contributions on DS. But this latest on Reddit is the best:

    “Isn’t it finally time, nearly a year later, to ask “why?” and think like the human(s) that did this?”

    HUMANS. They’ll surprise you every time.

  36. Couldn’t the two berms on either side of the field have been used as support for some kind of cover?

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