The unsettling oddness was there from the first moment, on March 8, when Malaysia Airlines announced that a plane from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, Flight 370, had disappeared over the South China Sea in the middle of the night. There had been no bad weather, no distress call, no wreckage, no eyewitness accounts of a fireball in the sky—just a plane that said good-bye to one air-traffic controller and, two minutes later, failed to say hello to the next. And the crash, if it was a crash, got stranger from there.
My yearlong detour to Planet MH370 began two days later, when I got an email from an editor at Slate asking if I’d write about the incident. I’m a private pilot and science writer, and I wrote about the last big mysterious crash, of Air France 447 in 2009. My story ran on the 12th. The following morning, I was invited to go on CNN. Soon, I was on-air up to six times a day as part of its nonstop MH370 coverage.
There was no intro course on how to be a cable-news expert. The Town Car would show up to take me to the studio, I’d sign in with reception, a guest-greeter would take me to makeup, I’d hang out in the greenroom, the sound guy would rig me with a mike and an earpiece, a producer would lead me onto the set, I’d plug in and sit in the seat, a producer would tell me what camera to look at during the introduction, we’d come back from break, the anchor would read the introduction to the story and then ask me a question or maybe two, I’d answer, then we’d go to break, I would unplug, wipe off my makeup, and take the car 43 blocks back uptown. Then a couple of hours later, I’d do it again. I was spending 18 hours a day doing six minutes of talking.
As time went by, CNN winnowed its expert pool down to a dozen or so regulars who earned the on-air title “CNN aviation analysts”: airline pilots, ex-government honchos, aviation lawyers, and me. We were paid by the week, with the length of our contracts dependent on how long the story seemed likely to play out. The first couple were seven-day, the next few were 14-day, and the last one was a month. We’d appear solo, or in pairs, or in larger groups for panel discussions—whatever it took to vary the rhythm of perpetual chatter.1
I soon realized the germ of every TV-news segment is: “Officials say X.” The validity of the story derives from the authority of the source. The expert, such as myself, is on hand to add dimension or clarity. Truth flowed one way: from the official source, through the anchor, past the expert, and onward into the great sea of viewerdom.
What made MH370 challenging to cover was, first, that the event was unprecedented and technically complex and, second, that the officials were remarkably untrustworthy. For instance, the search started over the South China Sea, naturally enough, but soon after, Malaysia opened up a new search area in the Andaman Sea, 400 miles away. Why? Rumors swirled that military radar had seen the plane pull a 180. The Malaysian government explicitly denied it, but after a week of letting other countries search the South China Sea, the officials admitted that they’d known about the U-turn from day one.
Of course, nothing turned up in the Andaman Sea, either. But in London, scientists for a British company called Inmarsat that provides telecommunications between ships and aircraft realized its database contained records of transmissions between MH370 and one of its satellites for the seven hours after the plane’s main communication system shut down. Seven hours! Maybe it wasn’t a crash after all—if it were, it would have been the slowest in history.
These electronic “handshakes” or “pings” contained no actual information, but by analyzing the delay between the transmission and reception of the signal— called the burst timing offset, or BTO—Inmarsat could tell how far the plane had been from the satellite and thereby plot an arc along which the plane must have been at the moment of the final ping.Fig. 3 That arc stretched some 6,000 miles, but if the plane was traveling at normal airliner speeds, it would most likely have wound up around the ends of the arc—either in Kazakhstan and China in the north or the Indian Ocean in the south. My money was on Central Asia. But CNN quoted unnamed U.S.-government sources saying that the plane had probably gone south, so that became the dominant view.
Other views were circulating, too, however.Fig. 5 A Canadian pilot named Chris Goodfellow went viral with his theory that MH370 suffered a fire that knocked out its communications gear and diverted from its planned route in order to attempt an emergency landing. Keith Ledgerwood, another pilot, proposed that hijackers had taken the plane and avoided detection by ducking into the radar shadow of another airliner. Amateur investigators pored over satellite images, insisting that wisps of cloud or patches of shrubbery were the lost plane. Courtney Love, posting on her Facebook time line a picture of the shimmering blue sea, wrote: “I’m no expert but up close this does look like a plane and an oil slick.”
Then: breaking news! On March 24, the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, announced that a new kind of mathematical analysis proved that the plane had in fact gone south. This new math involved another aspect of the handshakes called the burst frequency offset, or BFO, a measure of changes in the signal’s wavelength, which is partly determined by the relative motion of the airplane and the satellite. That the whole southern arc lay over the Indian Ocean meant that all the passengers and crew would certainly be dead by now. This was the first time in history that the families of missing passengers had been asked to accept that their loved ones were dead because a secret math equation said so. Fig. 7 Not all took it well. In Beijing, outraged next-of-kin marched to the Malaysian Embassy, where they hurled water bottles and faced down paramilitary soldiers in riot gear.
Guided by Inmarsat’s calculations, Australia, which was coordinating the investigation, moved the search area 685 miles to the northeast, to a 123,000-square-mile patch of ocean west of Perth. Ships and planes found much debris on the surface, provoking a frenzy of BREAKING NEWS banners, but all turned out to be junk. Adding to the drama was a ticking clock. The plane’s two black boxes had an ultrasonic sound beacon that sent out acoustic signals through the water. (Confusingly, these also were referred to as “pings,” though of a completely different nature. These new pings suddenly became the important ones.) If searchers could spot plane debris, they’d be able to figure out where the plane had most likely gone down, then trawl with underwater microphones to listen for the pings. The problem was that the pingers had a battery life of only 30 days.
On April 4, with only a few days’ pinger life remaining, an Australian ship lowered a special microphone called a towed pinger locator into the water.Fig. 8 Miraculously, the ship detected four pings. Search officials were jubilant, as was the CNN greenroom. Everyone was ready for an upbeat ending.
The only Debbie Downer was me. I pointed out that the pings were at the wrong frequency and too far apart to have been generated by stationary black boxes. For the next two weeks, I was the odd man out on Don Lemon’s six-guest panel blocks, gleefully savaged on-air by my co-experts.
The Australians lowered an underwater robotFig. 9 to scan the seabed for the source of the pings. There was nothing. Of course, by the rules of TV news, the game wasn’t over until an official said so. But things were stretching thin. One night, an underwater-search veteran taking part in a Don Lemon panel agreed with me that the so-called acoustic-ping detections had to be false. Backstage after the show, he and another aviation analyst nearly came to blows. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! I’ve done extensive research!” the analyst shouted. “There’s nothing else those pings could be!”
Soon after, the story ended the way most news stories do: We just stopped talking about it. A month later, long after the caravan had moved on, a U.S. Navy officer said publicly that the pings had not come from MH370. The saga fizzled out with as much satisfying closure as the final episode of Lost.
Once the surface search was called off, it was the rabble’s turn. In late March, New Zealand–based space scientist Duncan Steel began posting a series of essays on Inmarsat orbital mechanics on his website.Fig. 10 The comments section quickly grew into a busy forum in which technically sophisticated MH370 obsessives answered one another’s questions and pitched ideas. The open platform attracted a varied crew, from the mostly intelligent and often helpful to the deranged and abusive. Eventually, Steel declared that he was sick of all the insults and shut down his comments section. The party migrated over to my blog, jeffwise.net.
Meanwhile, a core of engineers and scientists had split off via group email and included me. We called ourselves the Independent Group,11 or IG. If you found yourself wondering how a satellite with geosynchronous orbit responds to a shortage of hydrazine, all you had to do was ask.12 The IG’s first big break came in late May, when the Malaysians finally released the raw Inmarsat data. By combining the data with other reliable information, we were able to put together a time line of the plane’s final hours: Forty minutes after the plane took off from Kuala Lumpur, MH370 went electronically dark. For about an hour after that, the plane was tracked on radar following a zigzag course and traveling fast. Then it disappeared from military radar. Three minutes later, the communications system logged back onto the satellite. This was a major revelation. It hadn’t stayed connected, as we’d always assumed. This event corresponded with the first satellite ping. Over the course of the next six hours, the plane generated six more handshakes as it moved away from the satellite.
The final handshake wasn’t completed. This led to speculation that MH370 had run out of fuel and lost power, causing the plane to lose its connection to the satellite. An emergency power system would have come on, providing enough electricity for the satcom to start reconnecting before the plane crashed. Where exactly it would have gone down down was still unknown—the speed of the plane, its direction, and how fast it was climbing were all sources of uncertainty.
The MH370 obsessives continued attacking the problem. Since I was the proprietor of the major web forum, it fell on me to protect the fragile cocoon of civility that nurtured the conversation. A single troll could easily derail everything. The worst offenders were the ones who seemed intelligent but soon revealed themselves as Believers. They’d seized on a few pieces of faulty data and convinced themselves that they’d discovered the truth. One was sure the plane had been hit by lightning and then floated in the South China Sea, transmitting to the satellite on battery power. When I kicked him out, he came back under aliases. I wound up banning anyone who used the word “lightning.”
By October, officials from the Australian Transport Safety Board had begun an ambitiously scaled scan of the ocean bottom, and, in a surprising turn, it would include the area suspected by the IG.13 For those who’d been a part of the months-long effort, it was a thrilling denouement. The authorities, perhaps only coincidentally, had landed on the same conclusion as had a bunch of randos from the internet. Now everyone was in agreement about where to look.
While jubilation rang through the email threads, I nursed a guilty secret: I wasn’t really in agreement. For one, I was bothered by the lack of plane debris. And then there was the data. To fit both the BTO and BFO data well, the plane would need to have flown slowly, likely in a curving path. But the more plausible autopilot settings and known performance constraints would have kept the plane flying faster and more nearly straight south. I began to suspect that the problem was with the BFO numbers—that they hadn’t been generated in the way we believed.14 If that were the case, perhaps the flight had gone north after all.
For a long time, I resisted even considering the possibility that someone might have tampered with the data. That would require an almost inconceivably sophisticated hijack operation, one so complicated and technically demanding that it would almost certainly need state-level backing. This was true conspiracy-theory material.
And yet, once I started looking for evidence, I found it. One of the commenters on my blog had learned that the compartment on 777s called the electronics-and-equipment bay, or E/E bay, can be accessed via a hatch in the front of the first-class cabin.15 If perpetrators got in there, a long shot, they would have access to equipment that could be used to change the BFO value of its satellite transmissions. They could even take over the flight controls.16
I realized that I already had a clue that hijackers had been in the E/E bay. Remember the satcom system disconnected and then rebooted three minutes after the plane left military radar behind. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how a person could physically turn the satcom off and on. The only way, apart from turning off half the entire electrical system, would be to go into the E/E bay and pull three particular circuit breakers. It is a maneuver that only a sophisticated operator would know how to execute, and the only reason I could think for wanting to do this was so that Inmarsat would find the records and misinterpret them. They turned on the satcom in order to provide a false trail of bread crumbs leading away from the plane’s true route.
It’s not possible to spoof the BFO data on just any plane. The plane must be of a certain make and model, 17equipped with a certain make and model of satellite-communications equipment,18 and flying a certain kind of route19 in a region covered by a certain kind of Inmarsat satellite.20 If you put all the conditions together, it seemed unlikely that any aircraft would satisfy them. Yet MH370 did.
I imagine everyone who comes up with a new theory, even a complicated one, must experience one particularly delicious moment, like a perfect chord change, when disorder gives way to order. This was that moment for me. Once I threw out the troublesome BFO data, all the inexplicable coincidences and mismatched data went away. The answer became wonderfully simple. The plane must have gone north.
Using the BTO data set alone, I was able to chart the plane’s speed and general path, which happened to fall along national borders.Fig. 21 Flying along borders, a military navigator told me, is a good way to avoid being spotted on radar. A Russian intelligence plane nearly collided with a Swedish airliner while doing it over the Baltic Sea in December. If I was right, it would have wound up in Kazakhstan, just as search officials recognized early on.
There aren’t a lot of places to land a plane as big as the 777, but, as luck would have it, I found one: a place just past the last handshake ring called Baikonur Cosmodrome.Fig. 22 Baikonur is leased from Kazakhstan by Russia. A long runway there called Yubileyniy was built for a Russian version of the Space Shuttle. If the final Inmarsat ping rang at the start of MH370’s descent, it would have set up nicely for an approach to Yubileyniy’s runway 24.
Whether the plane went to Baikonur or elsewhere in Kazakhstan, my suspicion fell on Russia. With technically advanced satellite, avionics, and aircraft-manufacturing industries, Russia was a paranoid fantasist’s dream.24 (The Russians, or at least Russian-backed militia, were also suspected in the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 in July.) Why, exactly, would Putin want to steal a Malaysian passenger plane? I had no idea. Maybe he wanted to demonstrate to the United States, which had imposed the first punitive sanctions on Russia the day before, that he could hurt the West and its allies anywhere in the world. Maybe what he was really after were the secrets of one of the plane’s passengers.25 Maybe there was something strategically crucial in the hold. Or maybe he wanted the plane to show up unexpectedly somewhere someday, packed with explosives. There’s no way to know. That’s the thing about MH370 theory-making: It’s hard to come up with a plausible motive for an act that has no apparent beneficiaries.
As it happened, there were three ethnically Russian men aboard MH370, two of them Ukrainian-passport holders from Odessa.26 Could any of these men, I wondered, be special forces or covert operatives? As I looked at the few pictures available on the internet, they definitely struck me as the sort who might battle Liam Neeson in midair.
About the two Ukrainians, almost nothing was available online.Fig. 27 I was able to find out a great deal about the Russian,Fig. 28 who was sitting in first class about 15 feet from the E/E-bay hatch.Fig. 29 He ran a lumber company in Irkutsk, and his hobby was technical diving under the ice of Lake Baikal.30 I hired Russian speakers from Columbia University to make calls to Odessa and Irkutsk, then hired researchers on the ground.
The more I discovered, the more coherent the story seemed to me.32 I found a peculiar euphoria in thinking about my theory, which I thought about all the time. One of the diagnostic questions used to determine whether you’re an alcoholic is whether your drinking has interfered with your work. By that measure, I definitely had a problem. Once the CNN checks stopped coming, I entered a long period of intense activity that earned me not a cent. Instead, I was forking out my own money for translators and researchers and satellite photos. And yet I was happy.
Still, it occurred to me that, for all the passion I had for my theory, I might be the only person in the world who felt this way. Neurobiologist Robert A. Burton points out in his book On Being Certain that the sensation of being sure about one’s beliefs is an emotional response separate from the processing of those beliefs. It’s something that the brain does subconsciously to protect itself from wasting unnecessary processing power on problems for which you’ve already found a solution that’s good enough. “ ‘That’s right’ is a feeling you get so that you can move on,” Burton told me. It’s a kind of subconscious laziness. Just as it’s harder to go for a run than to plop onto the sofa, it’s harder to reexamine one’s assumptions than it is to embrace certainty. At one end of the spectrum of skeptics are scientists, who by disposition or training resist the easy path; at the other end are conspiracy theorists, who’ll leap effortlessly into the sweet bosom of certainty. So where did that put me?
Propounding some new detail of my scenario to my wife over dinner one night, I noticed a certain glassiness in her expression. “You don’t seem entirely convinced,” I suggested.
She shrugged.
“Okay,” I said. “What do you think is the percentage chance that I’m right?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Five percent?”33
Springtime came to the southern ocean, and search vessels began their methodical cruise along the area jointly identified by the IG and the ATSB, dragging behind it a sonar rig that imaged the seabed in photographic detail. Within the IG, spirits were high. The discovery of the plane would be the triumphant final act of a remarkable underdog story.
By December, when the ships had still not found a thing, I felt it was finally time to go public. In six sequentially linked pages that readers could only get to by clicking through—to avoid anyone reading the part where I suggest Putin masterminded the hijack without first hearing how I got there—I laid out my argument. I called it “The Spoof.”
I got a respectful hearing but no converts among the IG. A few sites wrote summaries of my post. The International Business Times headlined its story “MH370: Russia’s Grand Plan to Provoke World War III, Says Independent Investigator” and linked directly to the Putin part. Somehow, the airing of my theory helped quell my obsession. My gut still tells me I’m right, but my brain knows better than to trust my gut.
Last month, the Malaysian government declared that the aircraft is considered to have crashed and all those aboard are presumed dead. Malaysia’s transport minister told a local television station that a key factor in the decision was the fact that the search mission for the aircraft failed to achieve its objective. Meanwhile, new theories are still being hatched. One, by French writer Marc Dugain, states that the plane was shot down by the U.S. because it was headed toward the military bases on the islands of Diego Garcia as a flying bomb.34
The search failed to deliver the airplane, but it has accomplished some other things: It occupied several thousand hours of worldwide airtime; it filled my wallet and then drained it; it torpedoed the idea that the application of rationality to plane disasters would inevitably yield ever-safer air travel. And it left behind a faint, lingering itch in the back of my mind, which I believe will quite likely never go away.
*This article appears in the February 23, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.
@Gysbreght: I cannot my find source of the 6-knot change in ground speed with a 100-knot wind in ECON mode. It very well may be that the reference said there was a 6-knot change in air speed, which would agree more closely with the numbers you presented. Thank you for pointing this out.
The northern paths that I presented were calculated for constant Mach number. No assumption about the performance of ECON mode was made.
@Peter Norton
“Was the General installed at Inmarsat for the US military to have a tight grip on the command and surveillance of the satellite data manipulation and to avoid any leaks (which would obviously immensely damaging to all involved) ?”
I think there’s no need for a huge conspiracy there. It would probably only take one knowledgeable person in the right position to quietly insert additional data into the database at the right time. Depending on the original source of those data, minor adjustments (AES & satellite ID, timestamps, ..) might even have been sufficient.
How the BFO May Have Been Spoofed
Notice: The views opinions expressed in this post are solely mine and do not express the views of the IG or any other group.
I explained previously that if the navigational data to the SDU of the SATCOM was intercepted and replaced to accomplish the BFO spoof, only the speed data (and not the position data) would need to be altered. This would allow the steerable antenna to still operate. However there are problems with this theory, including:
1. The sensitivity of the BFO to speed is low at 19:41, requiring that the actual speed of the aircraft be replaced with one unrealistically high. This is because the plane was flying tangentially to the ping arc at this time and the satellite was at its point of peak declination.
2. The complexity in designing the hardware, getting it on the plane, and installing it in-flight seems high.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about simpler ways the plane might have flown north while leaving behind the BFO signature of a plane that traveled south. In particular, I explored whether there might be a parameter change that would accomplish this task.
I discovered that if the AES estimated the position and velocity of the satellite using a model that included inclination, i.e., the orbit was circular but near-geostationary rather than geostationary, then by suitable choice of the inclination and ascension node time, a northern path would indeed look like a southern path. For instance, I find that for the path to Almaty Airport, if the inclination parameter was set to 3.4 deg and the ascension node set to 14:13 UTC, the rms BFO error is about 3 Hz, which is acceptable. This change in parameters would have to occur between 18:28 and 18:40 UTC, when we have previously assumed the plane turned south.
This theory is predicated on two assumptions:
1. The model for the satellite in the AES does include the effect of inclination, even though Inmarsat previously reported that the model assumed the satellite was geostationary, i.e., assumed it had no inclination.
2. There is a way to change the inclination and ascension node parameters.
I can report that, through private conversations with a knowledgeable individual, Honeywell’s MCS-6000 SATCOM does indeed include the effect of inclination in its model, so assumption (1) is satisfied. However, the SATCOM uses the value of inclination that is broadcast by the GES in Perth as part of the “System Table”. I have learned that the inclination that was broadcast was indeed zero during the entire flight.
I have not discovered a way for the inclination parameter to be altered after it is broadcast as part of the System Table, i.e., to satisfy assumption (2). For instance, I don’t see a way to change this parameter via the SATCOM menus in the CDU in the cockpit. Perhaps there is a maintenance mode where this is allowed but not described in the documentation I have found to date. Because I have not found a way to change this parameter, I have not earlier reported these results.
If there was a way to alter this inclination parameter, it would be a fairly simple way to spoof the BFO.
Mind-bogglingly impressive work, Victor, whether or not it turns out to be the actual case.
@el_gato&all
if this is done by people so powerful to corrupt a big company like Inmarsat and do it in a stealth way then we have much bigger problem than a missing plane
@Victor !
Great work on looking into the spoofing potential. Could the inclination parameter been centrally broadcasted by the Inmarsat infrastructure? Would be interesting if a number of aircraft received this broadcast that night and how they recovered to stay onward to their proper destination.
Peter Norton – BTO’s – I have tried to float this before now. BTO’s became an almost biblical cornerstone of the location science and all discussion that followed. The way I see it – trying to think like a criminal – it was a known since AF447, and therefore the game had changed. To me it’s a far more logical way to create a false track. Had the BTO’s clearly revealed that the plane flew west in zombie mode for instance, right under the satellite, it’s likely that BFO’s would never have been looked at in a comparative way? If you had the time and resources to plan such a thing you would do both. The beauty of experimentation is it removes the theoretical, where we are stuck most of the time. Look at all the best guessing our best minds have to engage in right here on this blog?
Spoofing – And there is always a shortcut. Bob Santamarta found his way into satcom units by bombing the inflight entertainment systems with text messages. Until you experiment you don’t really know anything.
@Victor
Re your 3.4 deg, I got something very close (for the 18:40 handshake) using Yap’ s Calculator.
I found that I needed different values for each handshake (19:41 ….). What about you ?
The simplest method would be to switch the output of the Honeywell device to manual mode.
Using Yap’s Calculator it is simple to fake any path you want. Then change the Honeywell output manually.
I am not sure if Mike Exner described this method a few months ago.
Anyhow – I am not sure that the hijackers wanted/needed to fake the BFOs and certainly not to the SIO (It does not make any sense).
Also, if the GES was actually sending the actual satellite position/data with each handshake, then the compensator
could potentially provide ‘perfect’ compensation (BFOs constant). In this case – you would be unable to detect the south turn.
Even if the GES sent these actual satellite positions with the handshake – would there be enough time for the Honeywell system
to complete the change for the compensator and for the transmit frequency ? We may be a handshake behind.
Actually, this is not a question of whether MH370 turned North or South at ~ 18:40, but whether MH370 continued in it’s current direction
at ~ 18:40 or turned abruptly turned South (120 – 140 deg).
I am not sure what triggered the Malaysian investigation to consider the South Turn.
I recall at the time that Inmarsat was not sure of their algorithm.
Also, the US had a ‘look’ and said that the MH370 made the south turn even before Inmarsat had finished their analysis.
Somebody wanted it in the SIO – but forgot about the debris issue.
It seems to me that for one or more reasons (not involving any faked BFOs) the BFOs were 30 – 40 hz less than they should have been.
Hence the declaration of the “south-only route”.
So until we can verify what the compensator was doing and that the BFOs were measured accurately – the north route is still possible.
Good luck in your work !
@VictorI,
Great find regarding the BFO spoof possibility via (undocumented?) system functionality.
One take away from that must be the propensity of discrepancies between Specifications of systems vs. their actual implementations.
I can speak from personal experience as a (non-aeronautical) software developer, that our delivered systems provided capabilities that exceeded the original specifications, as possibilities were discovered during the design and implementation stages. More often than not, such capabilities did not find their way back into the Specification documentation.
Anyhow, what this leads me to think, is that there may be possibly easier and subtler way to spoof BFO. Quite some time ago, we had discussions on DS of the different parameter inputs to the SDU. From memory these comprised altitude, but the spec said explicitly that altitude is not required for BFO compensation.
But here goes: what if the developers thought during implementation, “this is silly, we have an altitude feed, BFO is highly sensitive to ROC, why don’t we derive the ROC from a dAlt/dT and have a much more accurate system”? If such a functionality existed in their system, one could spoof the BFO by manipulating the ALT input, rather than changing parameters on the fly.
Maybe, its worth asking your Hoenywell contact, whether their system does such a thing.
Cheers,
Will
@VictorI,
It just occurred to me, that if the ALT => ROC derivation is done, then all the BTO/BFO path modelling would be in error, as they assume the effect of ROC to be present in the BFO and not compensated out.
I guess, the “ground truth” calibration would have found whether or not such a compensation component is present. Or is it possible that for example the fixed bias could be the result of a misinterpretation of an actually non-present ROC component?
Cheers,
Will
The ADS-B data provided “ground truth” validation of the BFO and BTO models and bias terms in flight, including the climb to 35,000 feet.
ALSM
@alsm,
Thanks for that clarification! It sort of occurred to me just after pressing “enter” on the first post.
That would then only leave a somewhat remote possibility of keeping this avenue for spoof alive, i.e. if the ROC comp is implemented but inactive by default.
The remoteness of this avenue is then that there would have to be some way of activating it during the flight plus the manipulation of altitude data.
In that sense, this becomes now less likely than the method stated by Victor.
Cheers,
Will
@Brock,
Kirill is on Twitter at @kprostyakov.
I think you have Kirill’s latest 18 station plot. Five stations have high SNRs.
I have not seen a “Curtin University” plot of the earthquake signal recorded at 01:30 UTC. I have seen the media reports, but I have not seen any data or any report. Does anyone have a link to either of these?
My suspicion is that perhaps they did not look at the appropriate time for a 40S impact because they were expecting the event to occur much farther north. The one event they pursued may have been the only one that occurred in the time interval they searched.
I share Dr. Duncan’s general trust in the acoustic and seismic data. A few stations are noisy because they are poorly located and pick up waves breaking in the surf zone, but most are fairly quiet.
Here are some relevant notes:
1. Signals, potentially from 9M-MRO, are being found in many existing data records.
2. The signals have noise characteristics similar to expectations.
3. For instance, at 15,000 fpm descent rate (from the last BFO), the vertical speed was -76 m/s. Since the approximate size of a B77 is about 60 m, one would expect that a fairly steep crash into the sea would have a duration of ~ 1 second or less. For a controlled ditching the duration could be several to 10 seconds, but who would descend at 15,000 fpm if attempting a controlled ditching?
4. The 18-station signals have approximate durations of 2/3 – 1 second.
5. The noise frequency content would be very roughly the speed of sound in seawater divided by the aircraft dimension = 1470/60 = 24 Hz. Kirill thinks maybe 10 Hz is a better guess.
6. The best frequency band for optimizing these signals appears to be 10-20 Hz. Some stations are band limited to lower frequencies.
7. Because the seismometers are 3-axis sensors, one has to combine the 3 signals in an optimum way for a rough assumed bearing before making any judgment except in a few high-SNR cases.
8. I am working on a method for searching long time records for potential events. I would suppose the “experts” have similar software, but I have not seen this described as a tool so far.
9. The uncertainty in a crash site location determined from multi-station records depends on the uncertainty in the sound propagation speed in water. This can be different to individual stations.
10. One way to significantly reduce the size of the error box is to conduct a controlled experiment. Set off a depth charge at the predicted location and at a precise time. Then analyze the records from many stations. You will find out very quickly how the sound speed varies with direction, and you can use the measured sound speeds from the depth charge event to calibrate the MH370 events. That should reduce the error bars on each path from say 10 seconds (=15 km) to ~2 seconds (3 km). Of course, there will be some variability of sound speed with time and season, but a lot of the systematic location errors can be removed. In the end, such an experiment would demonstrate that an impact event could be detected (and by which stations), and the localization accuracy would be significantly improved. I believe this type of acoustic/seismic analysis offers the promise of superior localization accuracy compared to all other methods invoked to date (including SDU data).
Bobby – I suggested a controlled detonation in the search zone a couple of months back for the same purpose. It might be revealing but there are some politics about. At the moment my impression would be that they do not want to introduce doubt over the data. Could yet happen though.
@Victor,
Thanks a lot for putting this out for evaluation. That is gutsy.
@Peter Norton,
You took the time for a long essay that touched many points of importance. And it shows that you also took the time to read a lot of our earlier comments and evaluated them. Thank you.
Quite a day… although it’s 02:30 in the morning here I will go and walk my dog in order to digest all this.
Just a few weeks ago most thought spoofing the satellite data is pure science fiction. Now we have possibly three different methods of spoofing the BFOs. Wow…
Nobody spoofed the BFO. I can understand how enticing it may be to play around with this idea–attempting to assume the role of a perpetrator and get in his/her mind..And I can understand how exhilarating it may be to delve into the extraordinarily technical aspect of this mystery and unravel new information about the possibility of tricking the world through elaborate misdirection. However, there are a few very important things here at play which I must mention.
With an unprecedented mystery such as this, one can clearly see how easy it is to get lost in fantastical theories. I get the sense that there is somewhat of a romantic connection that some have to the spoofing theory. It’s so romanticized that I get the distinct feeling that some almost wish this is what happened. There is certainly something tantalizing and attractive about the diabolical genius that would be necessary in order to concoct such a plot. Unfortunately, this is why humans are so fascinated by the realm of the devious and the mysterious–UFOs and James Bond movies. People are fascinated and intrigued, so much so that they want to believe. Confounding this is the fact that there is classic “groupthink” at play here. Groupthink is a term used by social psychologists to describe the phenomenon when a group values harmony and coherence over accurate analysis and critical evaluation. It causes individual members of the group to unquestioningly follow the word of the leader and it strongly discourages any disagreement with the concensus.
The fact of the matter is, spoofing the BFO is a fantastical theory. For those of you who continue to discuss this theory, each new piece of information added to the discussion effectively narrows the focus of the theory more and more. As this theory is continually fleshed out with more detail, the overall, big-picture is lost–It seems to be that some here are losing rational perspective. There are 2, maybe 3 inherent and unavoidable problems with the spoofing theory which more or less make the theory not consistent with any reality in which I am aware of:
1) Take a step back and think about the big picture, from the perspective of a “complex hijacker.” Consider for a moment all of the risks and assumptions that would have needed to be made in order to accurately predict that BTO/BFO would be the only means authorities would have to track this plane. Consider the sheer amount of minor occurrences that potentially could have completely spoiled the need to spoof the BFO. Consider the guts it would take to assume that fighters would not be scrambled. Assume the confidence it would take to assume that ATC would not be more alert. Consider the balls it would take to assume that JORN would not be on, that certain radars would be off, that satellites weren’t tracking them, and the list goes on and on.
2) Think about how unknown, in the grand scheme of things, Inmarsat was. Ask yourselves how ludicrous it would be to base an entire plot on something so unknown.
3) Ask yourselves, rationally and logically, what spoofing the BFO really would accomplish. Keeping in mind the above 2 points, what goal could the spoof possibly achieve? I have yet to hear any goal that sounds reasonable.
So why do I even care? Why do I bother writing this. The reason is two-fold. First, I do believe that a number of you are falling into the trap of your emotions getting the better of your rationality. I feel as though some of you have not taken a step back in a while, from the perspective of the overall big picture, and this is in effect clouding your judgement. Quite possibly, the amount of time and effort being put into the spoof theory could be better put to use dealing with reality. And that brings me to my second point. I believe that the IG is a very very highly respected group, and are undoubtedly considered experts on the case of MH370. I also believe that these forums are considered by many to be the words of the IG. Especially in light of Jeff’s recent media exposure, lots and lots of people visit these forums to get information, including family members. I STRONGLY believe that the extensive discussion about spoofing BFO is harmful to the IG’s image and overall respectability. A lot of people who come here to read these forums take your words as gospel, and I think it’s a bit damaging to have the spoofing theory now almost synonymous with the IG. Many people now no longer think the plane is in the SIO, but instead favor the theory that some sort of complex, dark, devious, mysterious hijack took place. Based on the known facts, I think that is a damn shame.
@ Jeff Wise–This in no way was meant to be confrontational. I highly respect and am in awe of your knowledge, imagination, and writing ability.
@Jay
Much needed wisdom, IMHO.
Maybe, just maybe, Jeff would be willing to begin a topic on H and Z. Whether sexy or otherwise, the truth lies there within…Malaysia knows virtually every last detail about the goings on that morning, all of which had nothing to do with Russia, spoofing, America, Inmarsat and all the rest.
How those interested in the truth allowed for themselves to arrive at where we presently are is truly mystifying…but what do I know? Just blue in the face.
@Jay, Spencer,
Don’t agree a bit.
“Gedankenexperiments” are often the key to new discoveries. Questioning the current state of wisdom every so often is the key for progressing the state of wisdom. That’s how science works.
The spoofing discussions are essential to arrive at an informed conclusion that spoofing is or is not possible.
You seem to have arrived at the “is not possible” conclusion already. I haven’t yet, and apparently a lot of other people have neither.
I think it is a discussion that we have to have.
Cheers,
Will
Jay – spoofing has been one of the things on the table here since the middle of last year. it’s a rejuvenated topic because there is no plane yet, but if discounting it has been done via your own rule of thumbery then there was no need for such a long post. In rebuttal though:
This isn’t an IG forum and has never been projected as such to my knowledge.
Malaysia has never scrambled jets – ever.
Jorn is not primed for runaway 777’s, and if it didn’t go south it’s irrelevant. Jorn is more likely to have seen in the Malacca Strait than off the west coast.
Signal data is the “only means” to track the thing because they switched everyhing off.
Inmarsat was an unknown in the loungerooms, anything but in the industry. Their role in AF447 is widely known.
“Groupthink” needs no explanation here. Many of the people delving into it do so almost uncomfortably.
Lost in fantastical theories? Or lost in a spreadsheet.
Any electronic trace left behind was always going to get the full intl forensic treatment. This would have been fully anticipated.
Spoofing would create a false track which would be handy if you were taking a plane for a reason other than crashing it.
Noone thought we would still be here a year later with nothing, and noone complained about the search parameters when they were set.
I think much is made of the difficulty factor with spoofing but if it’s doable then I’ll reiterate – there will be agencies out there who could do it sipping a Martini.
Did it happen, I don’t know. The more they say the data is “excellent” the more likely a spoof becomes ironically.
@MuOne
Quite sure that Inmarsat has by now explored this possibility in a depth and detail that far exceeds what has been accomplished by our tweakers and scientists.
I personally trust that they remain confident in the integrity of the data.
The ‘esteemed’ Gerry Soejatman himself has vouched for Inmarsat BFO values being ‘spoofed’ during integrity testing over 2 years ago (I personally believe his story is just a conveniently contrived fiction, but whatever).
If you guys (and gals) seriously believe Inmarsat is complicit, well, that’s a whole different matter..and even more preposterous than are present spoof obsession.
Spencer – “Quite sure that Inmarsat has by now explored this possibility in a depth and detail that far exceeds what has been accomplished by our tweakers and scientists.”
I doubt it, and they wouldn’t guarantee the data either. They don’t even guarantee the analysis. On the balance of probability they looked at it and decided that it’s well out on the periphery.
As MuOne seemed to allude to, it’s only when you seriously start playing around with these equipments you see what can be done. I doubt anyone has done that since MH370 went missing – in the civilian realm.
You have closed the book on Shah and have tied the noose, so we know what to expect, but most people’s minds are still open.
@Matty
Unlike some here who ‘hope’ for this or that, my mind remains open to wherever it is lead. And at every twist and turn it is led back to Zaharie.
There has not been one shred of evidence produced in over 12 months now that I have found compelling enough to potentially exonerate him. Nothing. Not the slightest hint (other than fantasy) that some ‘group’ or ‘agency’ or govt. stole the a/c for some truly incomprehensible and still to be determined purpose. LOL.
Whereas just about everything points to Zaharie…you just seem not to like the unpleasantness of this reality, but that’s your concern, not mine.
Cheers mate
Spencer
Spencer – you could say the same about spoofing. It’s so unpalatable some won’t look at it, but if it turns out to be a manageable scenario it puts a new complexion on everything.
And if Shah is cleared at some point……
Looks like we just lost a week of searching through weather.
@Matty:
“they [Inmarsat] wouldn’t guarantee the data either. They don’t even guarantee the analysis.”
Not only no guarantees, but something akin to its opposite – a disclaimer:
https://twitter.com/RunwayGirl/status/466705860992180224
@Matty, some great comments!
@Jay, I liked your long essay about groups getting carried away with an idea. There is some truth in it. Unfortunately you then have not a single solid argument against a spoofing scenario besides your gut feeling that there exist no perps who would risk such a thing. That’s not good enough. Let’ s first find out if and how it can be done. Let’ s evaluate the technical merit of Victor’s idea. If spoofing is not possible, we can drop the idea. But unfortunately it looks more likely every day that it can be done one way or another. That’s why we have now to evaluate we which group of perps might be willing and capable to do such a thing. Yes, it was a risky thing to do, but the possibility of electronically misleading pursuers and investigators it becomes actually less less risky.
This discussion should’ve taken place a year ago. You could as well blame group thinking that nobody touched it back then.
@Spencer, could you please stop with your insinuations against Gerry Soejatman? The guy had – like Victor now – the guts to present a technical idea. And we should give both of them the curtesy to evaluate the merit of those ideas.
@Nihonmama,
This disclaimer of Inmarsat is very telling. Basically they said: “We only analyse if the data point north or south and narrow down the search area. But we are not in the business of doing a criminal investigation.” They are right and wrong about that, IMO. While they are not in the business of catching perps they should’ve taken a harder and mote critical look at their hardware and software, which produced the pings.
Onya Jay, someone had to say it.
The Inmarsat data says unambiguously that the plane is in the SIO, near the 7th arc.
It’s a huge search area, so let’s wait till it’s exhaustively searched before we start making up absurd theories about terrorists with more knowledge of satellite communication than even Inmarsat had at the time.
Just a thought from a level-headed scientist.
@Sunny Coaster, Indeed, we all agree that the Inmarsat data unambiguously says that the plane went into the SIO. That’s why we’re examining a spoof scenario–it seems to be the only way out.
The search area will never be exhaustively searched, so in effect you’re suggesting we never look at alternative scenarios.
If the ATSB/IG analysis is the best that we can hope for, and the plane doesn’t turn up on the seabed by May, then the mystery will remain unsolvable. The question I would put to you as well as @Jay is: if you consider it frivolous to examine a spoof alternative, what would you consider a more profitable line of inquiry?
@Littlefoot:
“This discussion should’ve taken place a year ago.”
It did take place. On Pprune, Duncan Steel (well, a few of us attempted), Reddit, Twitter, on this board (later), and elsewhere. Rough going for those who had the temerity to raise the issue. Some even saw their posts on the subject of a spoof deleted. Repeatedly, in fact.
“Clearly topics that PPrune doesn’t want people to discuss. Like possibility that someone spoofed (fooled) Inmarsat’s satellite #MH370”
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/450299182159376384
@Littlefoot:
“This disclaimer of Inmarsat is very telling.”
No question.
“About a week after the above post, someone on pprune asked a question on the spoofing issue and a very specific (and illuminating) response was provided – by a poster trained in the satellite business. And then, pprune admin deleted it – #8789. I am still kicking myself for forgetting to screencap it.”
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/751/comment-page-3#comment-3961
“This disclaimer of Inmarsat is very telling.”
It tells whatever you want to hear.
Just found this — the Twitter account has disappeared:
“I’ve found one MasKargo flight that changed ID after a stop over, & another MAS flight with bad flight ID”
https://twitter.com/Anon_370A/status/483134630887837696
>While they [Inmarsat] are not in the business of catching perps they should’ve taken a harder and more critical look at their hardware and software, which produced the pings.
Inmarsat validated their hardware/software and their interpretation algorithms on the Amsterdam flight data reported in their paper. Any possible mis-performance of the Honeywell terminal on 9M-MRO on this particular flight is a matter for Honeywell and the Investigation, not Inmarsat.
I know nothing of technicalities, but I just recently had an interesting thought regarding MH370. Why blame Russia? Highlighting the presence of a couple of burly Russians on board seems like a B grade spook novel. And what motive would Russia have to steal an aircraft? Perhaps to use in some future, apparent, suicidal terrorism attack? And why would Russia go to so much trouble to steal an aircraft in pitch darkness and then a few months later shoot another one, ironically, of the same livery and exact same model, out of the sky in broad daylight? Smells like a setup to me.
I wonder if Russia was fed false intelligence from one of its allies regarding MH17 to the effect that it was in fact MH370, branded with a new ‘S’ transponder code and laden with explosives on its way to crash into a Russian target, 911 style. Just in case the Russians dispatch fighter jets to examine MH17 they are told that the deceased passengers from MH370 are strapped into their seats and made up to appear alive; this ruse would have inhibited a shoot down till the last possible moment. The Russians dispatch the appropriate missile system, with technicians, into Ukraine and shoot down MH17. They soon realise that they have been duped and MH17 is actually MH17 and they have just killed 298 innocent people. They hastily bring the missile launcher back home and destroy it.
Russia cannot admit to their failure because that would be tacit acknowledgment that they knew something about MH370 all along, but didn’t tell. Russia is now a tool of whoever stole MH370. My guess is that these planners are globalists; no ethnic, religious or national boundaries exist in their mind, hence the pointlessness of introducing ‘good nation vs. bad nation’ delusions; that nonsense died with 007.
But what of the real MH370? My guess is that it will be used to finish off 911, which was an obvious failure. The planners weren’t happy about that. Those pesky US military messed with the plan and shot an unarmed missile into the number one engine of United 93, which upset the hijackers and caused them, in part, to ditch the aircraft. Luckily for us the low pressure spool, less the low pressure turbine, fell out and landed 600 yards away from the crash site. The flight data reveals these simple observations; erratic N1 and N2 engine revs and erratic throttle resolver angles, both at 10:00:25 EDT. And the curious drop in left engine oil pressure, recorded at 10:02:00 EDT; and its miraculous recovery, recorded 64 seconds later! And those stupid jihadists thought that switching off the ECS packs would stop the smoke from the air bleed getting into the cockpit; how dumb can ya get!
But don’t worry; I’m sure there’s something in the constitution about hiding engine fans… isn’t there? Anyway, when it turns up you’ll see the fan, basically intact, the low pressure turbine blades, bent over, and the low pressure shaft, sheared, just forward of the spline that provides the fitment of the low pressure turbine. The turbine was jammed by the unarmed missile and went down with the ship.
I am sure that we will see MH370 again, as it erupts into a fireball of explosive justification for a new war…
Happy hunting:-)
@Richard Cole,
You’re right, if someone tampered with the hardware it was not Inmarsat’s hardware. But Inmarsat’s spokesmen repeatedly denied the possibility of a spoof, thus influencing the public opinion about such a scenario. Maybe they should’ve just stuck to their disclaimer that the data undeniably point to a southern route of the plane. I’m not implying any nefarious tendencies. It’s more like an expert witness overreaching in a courtroom.
The Inmarsat data says unambiguously that…..
What would be unambiguous is one lousy piece of plane.
You could also say that the reboot coincides with an unambiguous change of course for MH370? I’ve always wondered how “level headed” scientists could be so comfortable with that.
Criminal exploitation of Inmarsat’s own systems is not something I expect they would have spent much time on. That’s the problem with criminals – they seem to have a lot of time.
A level headed question but:
Sunny Coaster – If….. it is a complex spoofing scenario then Inmarsat’s role in it was simply to catch the data. Why would it have to be contingent in any way on their interpretative skills. Going further down the “if” road it might have been anticipated that the data would end up elsewhere. It doesn’t have to be about Inmarsat.
@Jay that was phenomenal, everything I wanted to say but was just too lazy to write so much
@littlefoot “Unfortunately you then have not a single solid argument against a spoofing scenario besides your gut feeling that there exist no perps who would risk such a thing. ”
it’s not gut feeling, it’s common sense…the difference is huge
@jeff
more profitable? Get some economists in ATSB and put the probabilities on paper, they will count what is the most profitable area to search economically speaking.
About the Mantra: ‘Your data are safe!’
@Jay
I fully agree with what you said about groups and their mechanisms to preserve their focus. It reminds me of one of the prominent heads in the philosophy of science, a certain Thomas S. Kuhn and his Ideas about how paradigms work in science. There is always one prominent paradigm cited, the geocentric order of the then scientific establishment under command of inquisition and catholic church against the heleocentric order of people like Tycho Brahe. For 2000 years that was a truly academic question of no importance in real life. But when with the advent of logarithms and modern maths in europe in the 16th century the demand for easy and simple solutions in naval navigation became overwhelming, the old mantra of a geocentric order was crushed, because it was by far too complicate compared to the heleocentric calculations.
So, please mind, science is not always about truth, its about group mechanism, about what is acceptable, if it fits into the system of values of the scientific establishment etc. etc. The whole of all of these aspects make a paradigm work. And one of those paradigms in a very clasical way is the mantra :”Your data are safe.”
Back in the seventies this mantra was useful, because the economy was falling behind due to the irrational resistance against the use of IT and office computers. In Germany it took more than a decade to persuade the industry to employ modern technology like personal computzers in offices. Something similar happened about the introduction of the internet. During all that time it was necessary to repeat that mantra. But those times have long gone.
Today we have a workforce that grew up with all sort of high-tech equipment and my 3 year old grandchild tells me how to use my ipad. I dont see irrational resistance to useful innovation any more and so the old mantra is but a relic. Today a new mantra is necessary: ‘Data are unsafe by definition!’
This message was served to us in depth during the last 2 years, and it needs no explanation, when we get to know that government agencies force on the industry to build unsafe software with backdoors all over the place, for use by all kind of surveillance. When one of those agencies – i am confident , that it is done in all countries with access to technology – states, that they want to make sure, that they can hack everything that is connected to the internet, you can be sure, that in a world where money can buy everything, this knowledge will be available to the bad guys too. We know about Snowden, who published the stolen data. We dont know about the others ones, stole the data and sold them.
So if you apply the new paradigm: Data are unsafe by definition! to the evidence produced in this investigation, we would look for sources of data corruption first, before we turn to exotic scenarios, like the SIO-scenario, that need immensely complicate assumptions and sub-scenarios with additional complicate sub-assumptions.
Therefore i say, it was premature to turn to the SIO before other, more simpler explanations were exhausted. I admit, that this was not a scientific situation in the first place, but a Search and Rescue operation, where you dont care for scientific deliberations. But now after one year we should leave the SAR-mode and turn back to scientific methodology. :
This tells us, that a deliberate act, where all comms were blacked out on purpose, would include a deliberate and planned re-login of the AES at 18:25. Since only exotic explanations (like the SIO scenario) imply a functionality of the AES as before it was out of power, we should make all efforts we can, to make sure, what happened to the quipment. Unfortunately, it seems, that there are multiple roads that confirm the new mantra: “Data are unsafe by definition!
Any tampering with the data in a well planned capture will have been trained in detail. Especially inflight access to the AES would have been tested with an identical Honeywell device and the same satellite. So irregular inflight – logons should be visible in the INMARSAT logs during the last couple of years. Every intern at the company could check for that. Why is it not done?
@Stevan,
Common sense is a good thing.
And considering that there doesn’t really exist a plausible narrative how and why the plane should’ve ended up in the SIO, where so far not a single scrap of the plane has turned up and since there’s no good answer to the question why the SDU/AES started working again at a very conspicuous moment, my common sense tells me that one should make damn sure that the satellite data haven’t been tampered with. Because IF they have been tampered with one suddenly has quite a few plausible answers for some questions.
The problem is that this case is a Black Swan event. It’s a singularity. And common sense and gut feelings don’t get you very far in such a case, since one has no experience from previous cases.
To conter Spencer’s argument that pilot suicide is a plausible narrative: I’ve said repeatedly that Zaharie’s social page entries combined with his strong political convictions do give me pause and I wouldn’t prematurely take them completely out of the equation, bit they simply don’t add up to a strong suicide motive, especially since the modus operandi doesn’t really make sense.
Notice: The views opinions expressed in this post are solely mine and do not express the views of the IG or any other group.
@littlefoot and @RichardCole: You are both exactly right that Inmarsat would likely not have the expertise to evaluate the kind of scenario I am investigating. Honeywell/Thales, as the manufacturer of the SATCOM, is the entity with the most knowledge to technically assess the feasibility. Who knows whether Inmarsat, when it was reconstructing paths based on the BTO and BFO signatures, was asking Honeywell the questions that I am asking about undocumented ways to alter the satellite inclination parameters? I doubt Honeywell would be overly forthcoming with information about security holes in its product, if they do indeed exist.
I will add that the Rockwell Collins 2100/6100 is a competitive product to the Honeywell MCS-6000 SATCOM. The RC SATCOM allows the user to specify the orbit inclination when the Owner’s Requirements Table (ORT) is built and loaded into the SATCOM. It is also possible to change the inclination parameters via the CDU in the cockpit through SATCOM maintenance pages, as well as reset the SATCOM by performing a “Cold Restart”. This makes me wonder whether there are documented features on the RC SATCOM that might be similar to undocumented features on the Honeywell SATCOM. The ability to change the inclination parameters and power cycle the SATCOM from the CDU in the cockpit could explain a lot, and lessen the probability that the perpetrators entered the E/E bay.
I present these possibilities as areas to investigate, not as facts. A crash in the SIO after fuel exhaustion remains the most likely explanation. But until we find one shred of debris supporting this theory, I will continue to explore other theories that allow different interpretations of the BFO data. It baffles me that so many believe that our understanding of the BFO data is nearly absolute. In fact, we don’t know what we don’t know.
Some thoughts about the two unanswered ground-to-air phone calls at 1839:52 UTC and 2313:58 UTC…
1. Both calls with Q10 AOC Priority Level (from MAS Operations Center)
2. Both calls would have been routed to the cockpit
3. Both calls were cleared by the calling party
4. Both calls were cleared after exactly 64 seconds
I cannot understand why MASOC only tried once at 1839:52 UTC to reach the aircraft, even though they knew that there’s something wrong with it. The call went thru, that must have been an evidence for MASOC that the plane is still there.
Why didn’t they try it again some minutes later? And again, and again – as this everyone would expect in such a situation.
Also Q10 is the lowest of three Operational Priority Levels (according to ICAOs “Satellite Voice Guidance Material” Q10 is used for Air Traffic Information, Redispatch, Maintenance – not Emergency!)
That’s quite in contradiction to the highly urgent ACARS messages to the cockpit printer which began 1803:23, failed, auto transmitted every 2 minutes and ended 1843:33.
IMO there’s no satisfiying explanation for the second call (3 hours later!), but it ends like the first one after 64 seconds – which may be an automatic timeout, didn’t find anything about this.
Besides this strange behaviour, the timing is interesting.
Although ACARS messages didn’t reach the aircraft at 18:39, MASOC successfully tried to call it via SATCOM once(!) that time.
I’ve got no idea what this means, but MASOC’s concerns about the aircraft in this period seem very limited to me – and i can’t believe they only lacked the competence to handle the situation.
_______________
(sorry for bad english as it’s not my primary language;-)
@littlefoot “And considering that there doesn’t really exist a plausible narrative how and why the plane should’ve ended up in the SIO, where so far not a single scrap of the plane has turned up and since there’s no good answer to the question why the SDU/AES started working again at a very conspicuous moment, my common sense tells me that one should make damn sure that the satellite data haven’t been tampered with.”
there are other locations in IO (e.g. far to the north) that make much more sense and don’t need any tampering, yeah it would be a big coincidence that BFO/BTO are the same as for straight flight path to the south but I had bigger in my life
I totally agree with spencer that some things are not discussed as much as they should be as this is not just malaysian problem but a very global one. Feelings of anyone’s family shouldn’t be the hurdle in this case and they should understand it.
@Victor,
Even if your suggested spoofing scenario is easier to implement than other methods, how difficult would it be for aspiring perps to come by the necessary information?
Gerry Soejatman said he has heard as early as 2011 that different factions possibly knew how to tamper with the BFOs. The knowledge and expertise – which seems to be an insurmountable hurdle for most of us – might’ve been there for a while in certain circles, and the perps wouldn’t have to start their research from scratch.
@littlefoot: I don’t (yet) dismiss it as “insurmountable”. As you say, the knowledge may be out there, if the capability does exist. Perhaps others are already investigating this possibility, in parallel or ahead of me.
Pairing of BFO and BTO data
@mathematicians
When looking for simple solutions for some sort of tampering with GPS/AES-data, one of the obvious reasons could be, to give a false impression of the location of the plane. One locating parameter is the signal runtime and its bias. So maybe if someone was successfull in producing wrong BTO only. Would different BTO (which makes a different ping ring system) values fit to the given BFO values? Maybe we could find a different ping ring system that would make more sense with the given BFO (i.e. leads to a location with a possible landing site).
Jay:
Thank you so much for sparking this needed discussion. It has amazed me how so many people (most of whom have no technical understanding satellite communications) have jumped onboard the spoofing train, with not a single scrap of evidence for any of these theories.
Victor is the only one who is taking a rational, scientific approach to exploring out of the box “what if” scenarios consistent with the scientific and engineering knowledge we have. He does not start with a tantalizing end point assumption and then cobble up a series of assumptions to support the end. He starts with a single, rational (albeit unlikely) “what if” assumption (BFO not accurate) and then calculates where that would lead, based on science and engineering. So I can support Victor’s curiosity, while agreeing with him that the SIO near 37.7S is the place to look.
The question has been asked: If MH370 is not found in the current 60,000 km^2 priority search area, where should they look next? The answer depends on where ATSB has actually searched. It is critical to have accurate ship tracks in order to provide recommendations on where to expand or change the priority search area. MC was providing the data to me and a few others last fall, but stopped doing so for unknown reasons. Several of us have attempted to persuade Marine Traffic (or one of their competitors) to provide search ship tracking data at no cost. So far, all have declined. Marine Traffic wants ~$4,000 just to open an account (they want 12 months in advance). Recently, I put in a request to ATSB to make the data available, but no word back on that request so far. Maybe we need to try crowd sourcing the $4K.
My last post motivated me to try to raise the money for ship tracking data. Care to donate?
http://www.gofundme.com/p6bxoo
ALSM
@Victor:
Keep going.
alsm you want to tell me that ATSB has spent $100 million on this search yet failed to provide a mere $4K for something that is actually useful?