by Victor Iannello
Note: Ever since the idea of spoofing was first discussed, one of the main issues has been how falsified BFO values might have been calculated. Most of assumed that the values were arbitrarily selected to suggest a flight in a generally southward direction. Here, Victor Iannello presents an ingenious suggestion: that hijackers might have altered a single parameter in the Satellite Data Unit frequency precompensation algorithm. — JW
Notice: The views expressed here are solely mine and do not representthe views of the Independent Group (IG), Jeff Wise, or any other group or individual. — VI
Summary
In previous work, paths were reconstructed for MH370 using the available radar and satellite data. Paths to the north of Malaysia were studied bymatching the measured Burst Timing Offset (BTO) data, but relaxing the constraint of matching theBurst Frequency Offset (BFO), which is appropriate if the BFOdata waseithercorrupted or misinterpreted. It was found that there are paths to the north that end at airports that could be reached with the fuel that was loaded onto MH370.In this work, the conventional interpretation of the BFO is challenged. In particular, the possibility that the operation of the SATCOM was deliberately modified so that a northern path would have the BFO signature of a southern path is studied. Some of the findings are:
- The Honeywell Thales MCS-6000 SATCOM used by MH370 hasafrequencycorrection algorithm withthe capability to correct for the Doppler shift caused by inclination of thesatellite. This is known to the official investigation team butis not generally known by independent researchers.
- The value of inclination for the Inmarsat I3F1 satellite that was broadcast by the Ground Earth Station (GES) at Perth, Australia, to be used by SATCOMs logged into the satellite, was zero. The true inclination of the satellite was around 1.65⁰. The two parameters that describe the satellite inclination, the inclination angle and the time of the ascending node, are stored in the System Table of the SATCOM in non-volatile memory, and are used by the frequency compensation algorithm.
- If an individual obtained unauthorized access to the non-volatile memory of the SATCOM, the value of the inclination used by the frequency correction algorithm could be changed from 0 to 3.3⁰, or about twice the true inclination of the satellite. With this change, the BFO signature of a northern path that satisfied the BTO data would resemble the BFO signature of a southern path that satisfied the BTO data.
- The apparent turn to the south between 18:28 and 18:40 UTC that is suggested by the measured BFO data might have been caused by a change to the inclination parameters stored in the SATCOM’s System Table during that time interval.
- The calculated values of BFO for northern paths with the inclination parameter changed to 3.3⁰match the measured BFO values with an RMS error less than 3.8 Hz. This is true for Mach numbers between 0.65 and 0.85 at FL350, with little variationin errorseen in this speed range.
- At each log-on, the inclination parameters would be reset to zero. Therefore, the BFO data associated with the log-ons at 18:25 and 00:19 UTC should be evaluated with inclination parameters set to zero. The BFO data at times between these log-ons should be evaluated with the possibility that a change was made.
- The BFO value at 00:19 matches an aircraft along the northern part of the 7tharc on the ground and stationary once the BFO is adjusted for the log-on offset seen at 16:00 UTC. This suggests that if MH370flew north, it might havesuccessfully landed.
- Researchers have identified security vulnerabilities in other SATCOMs, including backdoors and access to memory, although the MCS-6000 has not been specifically studied. The possibility of “spoofing” the BFO to disguise location has been considered before.
Read the whole report here.
@Nihonmama. The return of the Grauniad perhaps 🙂
On another topic… what of that statement by the Indonesian (police chief?) who said he knew what happened. Anyone know more about this? I thought this was a very strong hint of a coverup if true.
@Nihonmama, that Ronson didn’t respond to your justified questions is annoying. And it’s great that you asked. I’ve been curious about this for a while now.
But I didn’t say at all that fact checking doesn’t apply to this kind of atmospheric articles. But the alledged missing of text messages wasn’t presented as a fact. Ronson simply quoted Ethan Hunt. And that was perfectly obvious for the reader. Ronson also reserved judgment about Hunt telling the truth.
Now, if Ethan Hunt never said anything like that it would be a different story…
I agree however that the enorm significance of Hunt’s statement should’ve warranted further inquiries. If I had been in Ronson’s shoes I would’ve tried very hard to get to the bottom of this. But who knows how interested and well versed he really was with the mh370 conundrum. When we hear a statement like that our ears perk up immediately. Maybe his didn’t…
I had this exchange earlier today:
******
@VictorI: There are conflicting reports about whether cell phone texts and calls were received from passengers after boarding MH370. Do you have info?
@cryfortruth: Yes. Text messages and phone calls were received from passengers after boarding.
*********
@Lauren and @littlefoot: I do not think the fuel level spoof is necessarily simpler than the BFO spoof, although conceptually it is harder to understand.
Also, I have read nowhere that the concept of using the BFO to determine the direction of path was new to Inmarsat. Rather, the “groundbreaking maths” was never before used in an investigation. People have interpreted the words of Inmarsat’s Mark Dickinson, Chris McLaughlin, and others to imply they had never before done this calculation for other flights, and the theory was developed for MH370. This is an interpretation, not a fact. In fact, the design of the Inmarsat satellite network requires an intimate knowledge of effect of terminal speed and direction on Doppler shift and Doppler correction, whether or not paths were ever reconstructed using this effect.
Also, Jakarta-based Gerry Soejatman, who I would categorize as both knowledgeable and honest based on work we did together on QZ8501, has said that the ability to spoof the SATCOM’s BFO was known by individuals in Indonesia, China, Russia, and Israel. He gained this knowledge when he was employed by an Inmarsat reseller. This is all described in my guest post above.
I was also a little frustrated with Ronson’s apparent lack of curiosity.
If I had been in his shoes I would have grilled Ethan Hunt and asked him to elaborate. And Hunt made another potentially very significant statement where Ronson IMO miserably failed to follow up: Hunt said one of his PIs had found out, that the captain asked fore more fuel prior to the flight. Ronson only wrote that Hunt wasn’t able to show some proofs. Wouldn’t this have warranted some questions about how exactly the PIs had found that out, why did they think it might be true and if the captain gave a reason for that request, was the request granted and a couple of other important questions.
But nada…
@Littlefoot:
What is an “atmospheric” article?
“Ronson simply quoted Ethan Hunt.”
CORRECT. Ronson quoted what Hunt said.
Moreover, in the context of the story being told, Hunt’s statement is MATERIAL. It’s also in plain English and it reads as clear as crystal:
Ethan Hunt: “Not one message from anybody on that aircraft!”
cf.
@Cryfortruth: “yes there were definitely tmsg sent from on broad MH370 prior & even slightly after take off”
There is a UNIVERSE of difference between those two statements.
Ronson didn’t have time to confirm the truth of it. And the Guardian ran it anyway.
Because in today’s world, the story (or elements of it) doesn’t even have to be true. It just has to be clickable.
Recall, earlier here, I defended Hunt. But Ronson’s failure to fact-check Hunt’s claim thoroughly is highly problematic.
As someone who writes magazine articles for a living, I think I understand Ronson’s position vis a vis Hunt’s claim. The assignment to write about MH370 was at first glance a plum one, because it was a big story and was guaranteed about getting a lot of attention. The gamble for Ronson (and for the GQ guy, too) was that he’d report it out and not be able to find anything new. So what he’d wind up with would be a glorified book report, aka, an atmospheric article. No magazine or newspaper wants an atmospheric article! You always, always want to break the story open. But alas, he went to report it out and didn’t come up with anything really new. All he really had was this claim about how no one had phoned or texted before takeoff (which struck me as odd, given that Zaharie’s call to a burner phone was a big part of the story early on). That was the only new thing he had to go on. So of course he didn’t look carefully at it. He knew that if he touched it, it would probably crumble. So he phrased it in such a way as to put the responsibility on Hunt, and ran it, and probably crossed his fingers and walked away hoping to never look back.
@PM:
Right. If it were only about typos. 😉
As for the Indonesian police chief, yes, as mentioned earlier here — he got shut down too.
https://twitter.com/KBAB51/status/511152093017563136
And Lucy Barnes’ comment:
“What I have read, and what people in Malaysia have told me, Tempo not only news org at Press conf. All reached same conclusion.”
So, you get the pattern?
None of the MH370 ear/eye witnesses to date saw what they saw.
And all of the media in that press conference misunderstood what the Indonesian police chief said.
@Littlefoot:
“I was also a little frustrated with Ronson’s apparent lack of curiosity.”
ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
Hunt’s comments SHOULD have generated a NUMBER of follow-on questions.
@littlefoot, @jeffwise: yes, to single out this one Guardian reporter for condemnation is unfair, and to paint all journos covering this story with the same brush would wrongly condemn some of the finest truth-seekers this planet has ever seen.
But Jeff, I think you just nailed what’s wrong with the current system: news (and “news”) outlets are financially rewarded based not on accuracy & pertinence, but rather on speed & sensationalism.
Which makes fact-checking a money-loser, to be engaged in only as required to ensure their reputation does not become an OUTLIER among peers. And heck: when the story proves false, they just breathlessly cover the FALL of the source they had (wrongly) raised up. Win-win.
At heart, though, I blame consumers for this: just like in the grocery aisle, we seem to crave “junk news”: sugary/salty sensations whose binge-consumption we enjoy way too much to heed the warnings of long-term damage.
@Brock, I actually thought Ronson’s “atmospheric piece” (I thought I just had invented this term of description but apparently it does exist) was rather good and thoughtful for what it was aiming at. I like good atmospheric articles. Also there was a lot of info in it about the activities of the next of kin and Ethan Hunt. Many things were new to me.It was clear that Ronson hadn’t started this assignment with the ambition to crack open the case of the missing plane. As a confessed “mh370 geek” I was very disappointed that Ronson didn’t seem to recognize that Ethan Hunt’s claims are small bombshells – if they turn out to be true. And if they aren’t true – well then this would tell the readers something about Ethan Hunt and his level of credibility or at least thorougness. But apart from that quibble this was by no means a popcorn piece.
just recap – this link dated 2014/03/25 was noticed by me in some CNN article later in june (dont remember if I saw it earlier) – and it really looks more like movie trailer; but who writes the script for entire piece?
“the question now is why and another big question, of course, is where”
http://ht.cdn.turner.com/cnn/big/us/2014/03/25/orig-jql-flight-370-timeline-recap.cnn_512x288_550k.mp4
Falken – yes that was a long time ago. Fast forward and the BFO’s are on the road to becoming irrelevant. There will be no surprise anywhere if the expanded search goes the same way as the initial one so how do we view it then? Nothing found, and even if the BFO’s were found to be faulty tomorrow nothing would change.
@Matty
I don’t think there is such a thing as “bad” data. In a Kalman sense, all data has value. It just has to be weighted properly. The SIO terminus is the result of fitting an arbitrary model to noisy data. Maybe it is correct, but it is certainly not a slam dunk.
It would make more sense to me to integrate the Doppler residuals from some initial position of some confidence (18:25 for example), and see where (or even if) the integrated Doppler crosses the 00:11 ring. When I do this, I get a location much farther North than the current search area. I have not been able to completely wrap my head around Doppler integration using two moving objects (aircraft and satellite), so I am need to noodle this approach a lot more before publishing anything. Time is certainly not of the essence.
Of course, the position at 18:25 could be argued, but the exact position at that time is not all that critical to the approach.
@Dennis, yes and no.
“Bad data” is a matter of perspectives.
The failure to locate the plane in the searched areas and the missing debris might be annoying but isn’t bad data or bad results. Because it does tell us something: the plane is most likely not where they have been looking for it so far. That’s not the desired result but it’s a result nevertheless.
However if the sat data are corrupted somehow that set of data could be labeled as “bad data” or very misleading data with some justification.
Although even that would tell us something: again – the plane most likely isn’t in the SIO. And the perps are very clever and resourceful. And that might rule out at least some perps and some scenarios.
@VictorI – Re: BFO Based on your recent post, I stand corrected.
I guess I had confused the use of the BFOs in general with using them with a non-geostationary satellite to determine north versus south direction of MH370. Separately, wasn’t there an issue having to do with something that was unable to recognize a GES, like Perth, that is south of the equator? How would the spoofer’s have addressed this?
@Lauren H: If the BFO was spoofed, it was not necessary to know a priori that there was a software error in the downlink frequency compensation at Perth. The error just mean that there was an adjustment required in order to properly extract the uplink Doppler shift residual from the recorded BFO values. It made the analysis more complicated, but did not change in any way how the BFO might have been spoofed.
Dennis – not a slam dunk indeed. Maybe didn’t even hit the backboard. Any time you go heading up the arc any distance looking for a plane you are on a road that leads all the way to Kazakhstan.
Dennis – What I’m trying to get at is BFO-ology looks like being a short term discipline. That part of the analysis could go in the shredder today and it wouldn’t change a thing, so along the way expectations have taken a hit and Dolan hinted recently that there were certainly skeptics in the mix down at ATSB. Back in the beginning the deal was you couldn’t viably trawl for the pinger without a debris field. We had to give up on the debris field and settle for a area where it most likely was, replete with some slightly indulgent X marks the spot end point predictions but the planets needed to line up. Any time you go heading up the arc you are basically up the creek. What do you call it there – the hail Mary. The public stepped off ages ago.
@Matty
Certainly there is a lot of room for skepticism. I was never a big fan of the “consensus” analytics, but they were not horrible either.
I’m not sure that regrouping would make a lot of sense at this point in time. Maybe letting it rest for awhile would be best. There are a lot of smart people out there who might spin this thing in a lot of different ways.
It is also possible that the search simply missed the aircraft or that the aircraft lies just outside a searched area. Who knows? I remain open minded, and certainly tossing some alternatives around is a productive thing to do.
The BFO data was always hampered by the physics. I think people tended to infer more accuracy than was justified. But hey, we all have different experiences. My own career biased me toward a fundamental mistrust of oscillator accuracy.
Just documenting a few key coordinates for posterity:
A) [38.3s, 87.9e]: SW edge of fuel limit (@arc7), per p.8 of ATSB Oct.8 report
B) [38.44s, 87.59e]: SW edge (@arc7) of ORIGINAL Fugro “purple” zone
C) [38.92s, 86.70e]: SW edge (@arc7) of EXTENDED* Fugro “purple” zone
D) [39.72s, 86.00e]: Position (during bathy surveying) of Fugro Equator June 1**
* alleged result of 3 months’ bathy surveying “forced” on Equator by towfish cable issues…
** Equator has since scanned significantly FURTHER south, but I don’t yet have a specific coord
Observations:
1) Inasmuch as MH370 is supposed to have glided for ~21nmi PRIOR to reaching point A, and inasmuch as the SHORTEST distance from A to D is 125nmi, we are talking about a 145nmi (or more) glide – impossible even for a pilot starting at FL400 (would require a glide ratio of 22:1). This means the fuel limit of record and the current search are incompatible – both can’t possibly be valid.
2) The search has been creeping SW ever since May. These little “mini-jumps” appear designed to create the impression nothing is happening, when – on a cumulative basis – things are moving significantly. Sadly, such skulking around – without a word of explanation – is par for the course.
Brock – there may be no explanation but it’s open to interpretation. Maybe the playbook is evolving and it’s getting a little bit intuitive? If nothing found it will be a momentous press conference when the white flag goes up and I think they are feeling some pressure which would be self inflicted? Certainly won’t be their fault.
At 1:31 am, how long had the plane been flying?
Oh happy day! Someone else out there who understands that WITNESSES matter.
There’s a closed MH370 group (but anyone can join) on Facebook that my kind friend Jyothish (@aviatorjk on Twitter) hipped me to. Turns out that a gentleman by the name of Blaine Alan Gibson (a lawyer from the States) is on a dig in Asia (funded on his own dime). He recently left the Maldives.
Yesterday, he posted a VERY interesting piece about one of the the Kudahuvadhoo sightings. Turns out he also talked Abdu (or Abdul) Rasheed Ibrahim — the same person interviewed by The Australian investigative reporter Hedley Thomas. But Blaine got some additional information from Rasheed that did not appear in Thomas’story, namely: that the plane deliberately TURNED S/SE and flew away in that direction AFTER Rasheed saw it and there was “slight steam” coming from the plane. Blaine also talked to some pilots in the Maldives, who had interesting comments about the civilian and military radar.
For those who are not on FB, Blaine’s post appears in it’s entirety below. He is also on Twitter: @BlaineGibson3
http://on.fb.me/1QB0CUi
“MH 370 MALDIVES SIGHTING: REFLECTIONS and CONCLUSIONS
In the early morning of March 8, 2014 the residents of Kudahuvadhoo definitely saw a plane that fit the description of MH 370. They did not make it up. Abdul Rasheed, an employee of the Court, had the best view of the plane. The plane approached him at 6:15 AM from the northwest and flew on a bearing of 121 degrees towards the island, and upon reaching the southwest corner execeuted a deliberate turn heading South/SE at a bearing of about 168 degrees. As it turned he saw it was a mostly white plane with a long row of windows and a red stripe. When shown pictures of different planes he positively identified MH 370 as the plane he saw. Other witnesses testimony is consistent with his based on the angles they saw it. Humaam Don heard a loud noise and saw a white plane with blue and some red markings as it flew by and away from him towards the southeaset. He also noted “slight steam” coming from the plane. Other witnesses reported the loud noise and reported a white plane, sometimes with varying degrees of red and blue on it. When shown a picture of MH 370 (together with other planes) they said looked like it, or could be. Time estimates ranged from 6:15 to 7:00, but the witness who saw it the best said 6:15.
The Maldives Defence Force was wrong when they said there was no plane. This had the unfortunate effect of making some witnesses afraid to speak, especially the older women. While some may argue this was part of some big coverup, it could simply be that they were embarassed by their poor radar coverage. When I asked pilots about the civilian and military radar coverage in the southern Maldives I was told it was very poor. I asked one if radar would have detected MH 370 if it flew over Kudahuvadhoo, and he answered with a clear NO. Another pilot answered maybe… unless it was flying low. Another person said the radar at the southern airports was only switched on and monitored when there were scheduled airplanes taking off and landing, which was not the case that early in the morning.
So what was the identity of this plane ?? Everybody has confirmed that large planes never fly that low over Kudahuvadhoo. It was not a regularly scheduled flight. No regular flights were flying in that region until later that morning.. My interview with a Maldivian pilot confirms that Kudahuvadhoo is not on the approach to any airports. When planes fly from Male to Gan they fly to the east of Kudahuvadhoo at an altitude of 22,000 feet. Only one Kudahuvadho resident (Sufi pictured with the fish) reported ever seeing jet planes flying overhead, but at a much higher altitude, only once or twice a month, and he believed them to be passenger planes flying from the Middle East to Australia, but could not be sure.
In order to dispense with the Maldives sighting critics love to say it was a “private jet”. However neither the Maldives Defence Force, who coined the phrase (after first claiming there was no plane at all), nor anyone else, had ever identified this large “private jet”. My interviews with Male International Airport workers confirm that it was definitely NOT the Boeing 747 belonging to the then Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. His white plane with the green Saudi monogram dropped him off in Male, went back immediately, and picked him up later. It flew nowhere near Kudahuvadhoo. Maldives Immigration confirms that Prince William and Kate arrived Male airport March 6 on a regularly scheduled British Airways flght, and did not have a large private jet at their disposal in the Maldives. So both of those early and persistent rumors and internet disinformation are false.
Could it have been a military plane ? Remotely possible, but military planes have never been seen flying low over Kudahuvadhoo before or after. And what military planes are that large with a long row of windows and a red stripe, and what would they be douig violating Maldivian airspace and buzzing an insignificant atoll only on that one morning ?
So could it be that they saw MH 370 ? Yes it could. However for that plane to have been MH 370 the Inmarsat data interpretation would have to be wrong…whether it be the northern arc toward Kazakhstan or the southern arc to the South Indian Ocean. Additionally, the Maldives sighting ocurred about 30 to 60 minutes after the plane would be expected to run out of fuel based on the reported fuel load from KL and the final ACARS fuel reading. So if those readings are correct, MH 370 would have to be on its very last gasps of fuel. Of course those records could be wrong, or the plane could possibly have landed and refueled. The Kudahuvadhoo sighting is inconsistent with the eyewitness report of Mike McKay, but conistent with may eyewitness reports from fishermen and others on both sides of the Malay Peninsula, including Kate Tee far off the coast of Phuket.
I asked local Kudahuvadhoo fishermen and others if they had found any debris or personal effects that could be from a plane crash, and they said no. And in Kudahuvadhoo they were keeping their eyes open. I spoke with people in Male about the fire extinguisher that washed ashore in the north. They heard from the press that it was handed over to local police, and they assumed then given to the Maldives Defence Force, but never heard anything more about it, and have no idea of any tests, investigations, or determinations were ever made. I was unable to learn anything about an early rumor that some fishermen had seen or heard something resembling a plane crash at sea, and since Kudahuvadhoo is a very small place that fact alone leads me to believe the rumors were incorrect. However I have asked my friends there to inquire and keep me informed.
The most astounding thing to me is the miniscule number of people who have traveled to Kudahuvadhoo to investigate and report. Initially the local police took reports and according to residents, filed them away. The Maldives Defence Force paid an early visit to interview the witnesses, , and then at first said they made it up, ridiculed them, and told them if they wanted to help find MH 370 to go to Kazakhstan or the South Indian Ocean. All the early interviews by the Maldivian news were done by telephone…no reporters actually bothered to go there. According to witnesses and people in the hotel and guide business, no foreign search authorities or investigators ever went there. The only foreigners to go there were me, two French reporters a few months ago, two Australian reporters in February this year, and a Frenchman named Marc. I asked if the private investigator hired by the passengers’ families went there to interview people, and they said no. Yet that independent investigator somehow concluded that the plane seen was a “private jet”, parroting the same phrase used by many others. That is not how I conduct my amateur investigations with my own money … let alone a professional one with somebody else’s.
After my recent visit to Kudahuvadhoo I am more convinced than ever of the crediibility of these witnesses and their sighting, and I personally believe, but am not yet totally convinced, that they saw MH 370. My original theory was that MH 370 encountered an emergency, and set a course for Penang or Langkawi to make an emergency landing, The flight crew was overcome, and the plane continued on its course as a ghost plane to be sern in Kudahuvadhoo. However my simple Occam’s Razor theory is disproven by the timing and direction, as a ghost plane would have flown in a straight line and arrived earlier. Most of all, it is disproven by the deliberate right turn upon reaching the atoll to head almost due south, which I never saw in any press report or forum discussion, and I beleve the first reporter or foreigner to discover it was me.. I never believed before that MH 370 landed or was attempting to target Diego Garcia in a 9/11 style terror attack. However I cannot deny and must report the fact that upon reaching Kudahuvadhoo, whatever that plane was, for whatever reason, made a deliberate turn and headed on a bearing in the direction of that secretive military island. I still have not formed a clear theory as to what happened to MH 370 and its passengers and crew. I am looking for more evidence to form and hopefully confirm one. I hope that others in this forum, and most important the search authorities snd officials and governments involved will also be willing to question their own pet theories, and not myopically focus solely on the search in the Southern Indian Ocean. More important, I hope they do not jump to conclusions and rely on a pilot suicide theory based on little or no evidence simply because it is a quick and easy explanation.”
@Nihonmama
Wow. Truly riveting stuff, there’s no doubt. I think the Maldives theory is interesting, but clearly it’s downfall is that A) It’s not anywhere near the 7th arc and B) Seems to be a bit later than MH370 should have lost fuel. I’m a little loose on that second one, because I don’t think anybody can be certain as to exactly how much fuel was on this plane or how far/for how long this plane could have flown. I know that there are also people who would be loose on A) as well, as many people are beginning to lose faith all together in the Inamrsat data being of any value whatsoever. Very interesting.
@Jay:
Months ago, (Nov 2014 and earlier), I mentioned a Twitter user: @Petrossian50. No one knows this user’s real name/identity, but he/she claims to be retired and alludes to working formerly in intelligence.
Now, in light of the new information in Blaine Gibson’s post, consider these tweets from @Petrossian — from a year ago:
27 Apr 2014
“MH370 The Maldives National Defence Force has been “asked” not to follow up on the sighting of the low flying plane”
5 Jun 2014
“Just docked at Veymandoo. We decide to stay in the boat. Im tethering via satphone. Tomorrow we meet the fishermen. Another 5 hours on water”
6 Jun 2014
“MH370 Arzan and his wif Rym confirm very low flying plane to south. We are on Laamu. US planes for DG never fly over Maldives”
7 Jun 2014
“They saw a low flying jet too about 60 nm north of Peros Banhos flying straight south. No fire but blinking pos lights. “Very loud”!”
@nihonmama: I do believe the Maldives residents saw a large aircraft. Whether or not it was MH370 is the question.
The distance from the last radar position at 18:22 to Kudahuvadhoo is about 1,636 nm, so there was sufficient fuel to reach this location, but insufficient fuel to remain airborne the entire interval based on the reported fuel load and a witness sighting of MH370 in the Maldives around 6:30 am local time (1:30 UTC).
If this aircraft was indeed MH370, it would imply:
1. The “standard” interpretations of the BTO and the BFO data are completely incorrect, either because of corrupted data or incorrect modeling, and
2a. MH370 landed and took-off, with or without a refueling, or
2b. The reported fuel loading is incorrect, or
2c. The reported time of the sighting was not 1:30 UTC due to incorrect reporting of the local time or incorrect time zone adjustments (by me).
@nihonmama: As you know, if you follow the history of tweets from @Petrossian50, you will see that back in February 2015 he was implying that MH370 was in a lagoon at Diego Garcia. Later he said he was just speculating, and he now believes the plane was “definitely” in the north, but not in Kazakhstan because the Kazakhs are “too clever”. In fact, he works hard to deflect attention away from Kazakhstan and towards other Central Asian countries. He also insists the Iranians and the Malaysians are involved in the disappearance.
If you look at his other tweets to gain an understanding of his political leanings, in his tweets on the downing of MH17, on the Ukraine-Russian conflict, and even on the World Cup scandal, he is unabashedly anti-US and pro-Russia.
He offers as much evidence as Tom McInerney did when McInerney claimed that MH370 landed close to the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan and would be used in an attack on the US on 9/11/2014. Well, thankfully McInerney’s prediction proved utterly false, and he’s never offered an explanation as to why.
I believe disinformation campaigns have proliferated in this incident as countries try to use the incident to their political advantage. With the lack of evidence, it is not easy to separate the information from the disinformation, as we are all starved for any new data.
@Nihonmama
Eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable. I don’t discount them, but I weight them carefully. I don’t think it is a matter of people lying, but numerous controlled studies have shown how difficult it is to reconcile actual events with eye witness perceptions.
The BTO data, unless spoofed, is very reliable. The notion that Inmarsat or anyone else tampered with it is very difficult to accept. If BTO was spoofed, the Maldives don’t appear to be a logical place to take the aircraft i.e. motive rears its ugly head again.
The Maldives just don’t hang together as a possible terminus for me.
@Victor
The interpretation of BTO and BFO are not incorrect. I am quite sure of that. The methodology has been vetted against many other flights as well as previous flights of 9M-MRO. That notion would be an enormous stretch even for a conspiracy theorist. It is very safe to discard that hypothesis.
@DennisW: I place incorrect interpretation of the BTO/BFO also as having low probability for the reasons you mentioned. Whether or not the data has been deliberately corrupted is harder to prove one way or another, but I suspect the BTO data is valid.
@VictorI:
You said:
“If this aircraft was indeed MH370, it would imply:
1. The “standard” interpretations of the BTO and the BFO data are completely incorrect, either because of corrupted data or incorrect modeling, and
2a. MH370 landed and took-off, with or without a refueling, or
2b. The reported fuel loading is incorrect, or
2c. The reported time of the sighting was not 1:30 UTC due to incorrect reporting of the local time or incorrect time zone adjustments (by me).”
Yes, the data ‘story’ may not be correct and/or MH370 may have had more fuel on board than was reported. Imagine that.
Further —
If your take is 100% correct and Petrossian50 is completely anti-US, are you saying that solely based on his political views (which are his, not mine), his interviews in the Maldives are invalid and should therefore be dismissed? Or that disinformation is not used by the US — or those who are pro-US?
You do understand that the bias that can stem from one’s political leanings is not limited to those you’d label as ‘pro-Russia’, right?
Let me digress for a minute and say something:
I don’t live in an absolutist world where everything is black and white — mine is one that is complex, nuanced and diverse. I don’t believe that being a patriotic American means that one cannot (and should not) criticize US policies. That’s not, by a long shot, what the Founder’s intended. And what I understand about the Founder’s intent and the Constitution doesn’t, like many people it seems, come from a talking head on a cable news channel. The beauty of law school is that you actually have to STUDY the Constitution — not only it’s evolution, but how it came to be.
Some of our less-flattering history includes countless CIA-backed coups, the murder of innocent civilians by US armed forces (Vietnam), illegal wiretapping — recall, that one brought down a US president, renditions to black sites to conduct torture, drone killings of countless civilians in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan (and the jailing of local journos who reported on it) and lest we forget, that tragic debacle in Iraq, which resulted not only in 100K+ deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians, but the deaths of almost 5000 US servicemen/women.
And how did we end up in Iraq? A lie. US DISINFORMATION that was packaged and sold as verified US intelligence. And all of that birthed ISIS.
So, do you really want to talk about who traffics in disinformation? Yes, the US is a democracy. But the Russians are in good company.
And we won’t even talk about what we learned from Edward Snowden.
Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Glenn Greenwald, Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill and numerous other investigative reporters in the US — earned their stripes for a reason. And let me add the late Michael Hastings, who died in a very mysterious, fiery car crash not too far from where I live. We’re told it was an ‘accident’ and that he had a drug/alcohol problem. It’s also the case that he had a BIG story coming.
So would I automatically conclude that if a source of information were 100% ‘pro-US’ that their information would inherently be more trustworthy and unassailable than someone who leans toward Russia? — or who was characterized as such? No. Nor would I conclude that if someone were ‘pro-Russia’ that everything they say is true. Imagine that.
Back to the ranch.
Your comparison to McInerney doesn’t work for a very simple reason: we’re talking about different accounts from different witnesses, at different locations in the Maldives, relayed to two different people — one year apart.
And the info from the witnesses Petrossian50 claims he/she talked to appears to be potentially corroborative of what Blaine (an AMERICAN, BTW) was told — about the direction of the plane people claim to have seen — and that the military in the Maldives didn’t follow up. That’s the same entity that said there was no plane seen in the Maldives at all. The same entity that mocked the Maldives witnesses who came forward.
I’d wager that most judges looking at Petrossian50 and Blaine’s witness accounts TOGETHER would conclude that the information is probative.
As “Tip” O’Neill used to say: all politics is local.
And bias is a funny thing.
About the Maldives:
Remember also the Mega Maldives flight from mid-Thailand arriving at Male around 6:30 am. If the low flying a/c sighting at Maldives was not at 06:15am exactly but somewhat later (a window between 6:15 and 7:30 was mentioned) it could somehow be connected to the flight coming from Thailand. If I remenber well it was the weekend that Cope Tiger started (Korat air force base). Possibly there have been military transports between DG and Korat?
So, if there is any link with MH370 I really don’t know. You would enter more complicated scenarios with for example two a/c involved from IGARI onwards, a copied ICAO address and a pre-calibrated oscillator in the second AES. Technically all well possible, however no proofs at all.
It would be better autorities would have served clear wine about the low flying aircraft over Maldives in the first place. It would have saved a lot of headaches.
Niels.
@nihonmama: First, I openly admit I am biased. We all are. But in my case, I use my real name, my residence and citizenship are well-known, people can learn about me by doing simple Google searches, and what information I have uncovered I disclose as transparently as I can. So people can read what I write and make decisions about my credibility with relevant information in hand.
On the other hand, with @Petrossian50, he makes assertions without disclosing any evidence other than unnamed witnesses. He first implied the plane was in a lagoon in the Maldives. Then he later said he had no proof but he was speculating about the Maldives. Then he said the plane was definitely in the north, but definitely not in Kazakhstan because the Kazakhs are “clever”, whatever that means.
I question his truthfulness because of his changing storyline, his presentation of speculation as assertion, and his unwillingness to disclose any data that can be verified. I have not seen anything he has said that was not already publicly known. there is no corroboration.
So given that I question his truthfulness, I ask myself the motivation for the deception. It is evident that he is anti-US and pro-Russia, so that leads me to question if he is part of Russian propaganda. I did not make a judgment about his truthfulness based on his political leanings. Rather, I am examining his political leanings to try to understand why he may be deceiving. There is a BIG difference.
And now @Petrossian50 claims his distractors are being paid? That alone should make you question his integrity. In fact, HE has claimed this his own investigation is funded.
And if I was judging truthfulness based on biases, I would not have put McInerney in the same basket as @Petrossian50. Clearly, McInerney is retired US military and is pro-US, but I also believe what he has to say is deceptive as he also offers no verifiable evidence and his claims have proven false. I have tried to understand his motivation for deceiving much the same as I have for @Petrossian50. My hunch is that McInerney is being fed bad intelligence, so again I ask myself why and by whom.
@Nihonmama
I agree with your statement relative to a judge’s conclusion of probative (as you have carefully positioned it). However, a failure to disclose would be a modifier – that is a failure to disclose other compelling information that says the plane could not have possibly been in that location. 🙂
Showing a witness a picture of a Malay painted 777 without including it in an ensemble of other pictures, and asking the witness to pick the plane he saw is extremely prejudicial as you know. The witnesses are now tainted as well. I’m sure you have seen US movies where the concept of a “lineup” is employed (for good reason).
My guess is that an experienced judge looking at fully disclosed information, and the tainted witnesses might not find the accounts probative.
I’m interested in people’s view on this at this exact point in time. What I ask is for you to give what you believe to be a reasonable percentage for each end location based on what you know/believe to be true at this point in time
A) SIO
B) Northern Arc
C) Maldives
D) Diego Garcia
E) South China Sea
F) Bay of Bengal
G) Other
My percentages are as follows
A) 90%
B) 2%
C) 2%
D) <1%
E) <1%
F) <1%
G) 5%
Obviously, there is no precise algorithm used to form these percentages, but more of my hunch with what I believe to be true about the facts, what information I question, and what information is still unknown.
@Victor:
“I have not seen anything he has said that was not already publicly known. there is no corroboration.”
And yet, here we are talking about someone else (Blaine Gibson) whose own self-funded dig in the Maldives has uncovered information that hasn’t been reported ANYWHERE to my knowledge — and it seems to generally corroborate what Petrossian says his/her witnesses said.
So is Blaine’s information also to be dismissed? What is his agenda? He’s American and a lawyer. His expedition is self-funded and he didn’t even know that there were witnesses on ANOTHER island in the Maldives who’d talked to someone (read: Petrossian) until I made him aware of that — on Facebook. How can it be that two different people who weren’t aware of each other have witness accounts that taken together, seem to jive?
And you said:
“And now @Petrossian50 claims his distractors are being paid? That alone should make you question his integrity. In fact, HE has claimed this his own investigation is funded.”
Why question his integrity? Petrossian hasn’t said that he’s being PAID by anyone. In fact, he said just the OPPOSITE:
Mar 20 2015
“MH370 we got funding offer from families of (dead) victims. But we are on our own”
That looks to me like Petrossian is saying he/she/they are self-funded. And IF that is the case, it’s just like Blaine. So what is the problem?
Moreover, do you actually believe that Putin (and others with an agenda to push) are the ONLY ones who are using PAID disinformation agents on various social media platforms — including Twitter — but the US (and its allies) are not?
Perhaps you missed THIS story:
Washington Post — The emerging dark side of social networks
“The United States might end up eroding the trust of citizens around the globe who once thought of the United States as the home of democracy and progress.”
http://wapo.st/1Kj9D4D
You said:
“My hunch is that McInerney is being fed bad intelligence, so again I ask myself why and by whom.”
It’s a great question to ask.
Consider this: McInerney is not being fed, he’s being UTILIZED. As you said: “he also offers no verifiable evidence and his claims have proven false.”
So why does he keep appearing on FOX News?
Last I looked, Rupert Murdoch was not using his media properties as a platform to further Russian interests.
@DennisW:
You said:
“Showing a witness a picture of a Malay painted 777 without including it in an ensemble of other pictures, and asking the witness to pick the plane he saw is extremely prejudicial as you know.”
A picture? Did you and I actually read the same post?
THIS is what Blaine wrote:
“When shown PICTUES of DIFFERENT PLANES (CAPS mine) he positively identified MH 370 as the plane he saw.”
You said:
“The witnesses are now tainted as well.”
Tainted witnesses. You mean like Kate Tee — who got a phone call wherein it was ‘suggested’ to her that the plane she saw was not MH370, but an Indian P8 on patrol — but that fact (as far as I’m aware) has never been proven?
Yes, I know about tainted witnesses.
You said:
“I’m sure you have seen US movies where the concept of a “lineup” is employed (for good reason).”
I’ll do you one better Dennis — I’ve not only seen lineups in movies and on TV, but I’ve actually been PRESENT during ACTUAL police line-ups.
Blaine’s description of presenting DIFFERENT pictures to Abdul would be the equivalent of a lineup.
But you’re free to join the Facebook group and talk to Blaine directly about what you think he didn’t disclose. 😉
@Nihonmama
Of course, when the judge asks for your take on the other information what are you going to say? Launch into a detailed conspiracy narrative involving several sovereign states and a well respected multi-national corporation? When I was done with you, you would be lucky to get out of the courtroom without a disciplinary action.
@DennisW:
“Of course, when the judge asks for your take on the other information what are you going to say? Launch into a detailed conspiracy narrative involving several sovereign states and a well respected multi-national corporation?”
That is what’s called asserting facts not in evidence.
“When I was done with you, you would be lucky to get out of the courtroom without a disciplinary action.”
Somehow, I doubt it. 😉
@Nihonmama
Yes, relative to Blaine and his pictures. Unfortunately he was not the first person to interview witnesses. These witnesses had ample opportunity to be corrupted by sloppy interviews long before Blaine arrived on the scene. The chain of evidence has all sorts of weak links in it.
I am playing devil’s advocate here. Your position is simply not as strong as you believe it to be.
@Nihonmama
As a defense attorney for the ATSB and other “good guys” I would certainly bring those points to bear. Also as a prosecutor (which you would be in this instance) you have an obligation to disclose.
@nihonmama: As I said before, @Petrossian50 is not consistent even with himself. That is why I doubt his truthfulness. I won’t retype all that I previously said. He most recent statements are the plane was in the north. Not a lagoon in the Maldives. The two statements are not consistent. Which are we to believe? Why don’t you ask him.
When did I say that Blaine Gibson was not truthful? Unlike @Petrossian50, he has not to my knowledge disagreed with his own statements. Nor he is hiding behind a Twitter handle.
And when did I say that Fox News is not biased? So is the New York Times, CNN, and even Jeff Wise. And you and I also have our own biases. I thought I made that clear in my post. And why did I say only Russia has paid informants? I gave the example of McInerney being fed propaganda.
@Petrossian50 claimed that nobody is paying attention because everybody is paid. Well, I know for certain that I not getting paid so he is wrong again. It’s statements like this as well as a shifting story line that leads me to believe he is a phony.
@VictorI – When I read Nihonmama’s post about the Maldives, I thought I would check the range, endurance and UTC time conversion. I then read your post. I got the same numbers.
@Jay A-95%
B-5%
All others are zero.
@DennisW:
“I am playing devil’s advocate here.”
No, you showed your fangs. The attempt to put me (and others) into the ‘conspiracy’ basket is a puerile (and ineffective) one. But please, have at it. It does not intimidate me in the slightest.
You said:
“Your position is simply not as strong as you believe it to be.”
Some would say that also applies to those who’ve relied on the BFOs and BTOs to the exclusion of everything else.
My position is simply that we have accounts from two sets of witnesses, on two different islands in the Maldives relayed to two different people, one year apart, that appear to be generally corroborative of each other.
At the end of the day, the facts will rise (or fall) on their own. They always do.
@Jay
A) 10% (SIO)
B) 10% (Northern Arc)
G) 80% (In the vicinity of Christmas Island)
Niels – Maldives – The 2nd aircraft as a decoy would be very Russian(sophisticated perps) and I think that Dennis already identified a plane with the legs to do it. It explains the reboot? That plane busted a gut to head west, it appears absolutely determined to do so.
@Jay
A) 99.6% (Somewhere in SIO)
G) .4% (vicinity of Xmas island or was flown into mouth of volcano…somewhere)
@jay – since you asked
A) 0% SIO
B) 25% Northern Arc
C) 0% Maldives
D) 0% Diego Garcia
E) 25% South China Sea
F) 0 Bay of Bengal
G) 50% Malaysia – landed intact
Again: Kudahuvadhoo – how I love the name of the island by now.
What I believe is that the Kudahuvadhoans have seen a large noisy plane after sunrise which was flying at a very low altitude. The color of the plane was described as white with some red stripes and possibly also some blue ones. The whole experience must’ve been very unusual or even unheard of for them. Thus far I absolutely believe the eyewitnesses. And every journo or researcher has verified what I stated above. Nothing less and nothing more. The showing of the different pictures of planes is pretty meaningless because it comes far too late. Rand had taken the trouble to conduct a bit of telephone research himself and he found out that the times of the sighting,descriptions of the size and even the color of the plane vary considerably. The sightings have been apparently going on over more than an hour and at another island, too. While I absolutely believe in the sightings of the Kudahuvadhoans I don’t think they’ve seen mh370. Why not? Because it doesn’t make any sense – and I’m not talking about the ping rings now. Let’s assume they were all fake. Even then the scenario doesn’t make sense. If the plane was limping on it’s last legs to the Maldives because of a freak accident or another ailment and then ran out of fuel somewhere near the Maldives, then, where is the wreckage and the drifting debris? Something should have turned up by now. It also doesn’t gel with the prolonged observation of the plane at different times and locations. Now, if the plane was hijacked in order to fly it to DG for whatever reason – or to Somalia for other nefarious purposes, why did the plane make such a show of itself over the islands. The narratives almost sound as if the plane was meant to be seen and noticed by as many witnesses as possible. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever if the plane was mh370. Even if the crew wanted to attract attention because they needed help it doesn’t make any sense. The plane would’ve hung around then or tried a ditch after many people had seen it and could’ve organized help and rescue.
If the plane sightings had really a connection with h370, then I would go with Matty’s idea of a decoy plane which tried to attract as much attention as possible. And that certainly worked.
Why a decoy plane? Well, if the plane did not crash into the SIO but went North instead, nobody was supposed to look too hard into that direction during those two weeks Inmarsat was still figuring out that the plane went South for sure.
I have no idea if something like this happened or if this is too far fetched. But considering how the plane behaved it’s one explanation which makes some sense in connecting with mh370.
And yes, such an operation would have some cold-war flavor.
I did some exhaustive checks and a white plane with red and blue stripes seems to be absolutely the most favorite color scheme. I could show you Russian planes, British planes, Chinese planes and an assortment of aircrafts from other countries. So the description of the Kudahuvadhoans doesn’t mean a lot. There are way too many planes looking like that. Some of them could be hired as veritable doppelgängers of mh370.