Last week, the Joint Investigation Team conducting a criminal investigation into the downing of idH17 issued their preliminary findings. Here’s what I think are the main takeaways.
— The findings strongly endorse the work of “open source intelligence” pioneer Eliot Higgins and his group, Bellingcat. In the immediate aftermath of the shoot-down, it was accepted by nearly every pundit and journalist that the missile had been fired accidentally by poorly trained militiamen who had somehow gotten their hands on an SA-11 Buk launcher and had a acquired a target without bothering to first identify it. But by painstaking work and great resourcefulness, the Bellingcat team was able to piece together an extremely convincing timeline, by which the launcher was brought across the border from a specific Russian military unit, was transported under the direction of the GRU (Russian military intelligence), shot down MH17, and was sent back across the border that night. As I’ve written previously, the timeline described by Bellingcat does not fit with the hapless-militiaman scenario very well. As the New York Times reported, “It is unlikely that anyone not connected with the Russian military would have been able to deploy an SA-11 missile launcher from Russia into a neighboring country.”
— While still admiting the possibility that the Buk crew acted on its own, the report shifts the emphasis to the once-unthinkable: that the missile launch was ordered by higher-ups:
…an investigation is conducted into the chain of command. Who gave the order to bring the BUK-TELAR into Ukraine and who gave the order to shoot down flight MH17? Did the crew decide for themselves or did they execute a command from their superiors? This is important when determining the offences committed by the alleged perpetrators.
As the New York Times put it, the JIT has signaled that it intends “to build an open-and-shut case against individual suspects and to diagram the chain of command behind the order to deploy and launch.”
One can just about imagine a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, newly trained and sitting nervously in the cab of his Buk TELAR, messing up and accidentally firing a missile at an unidentified target. But it is harder to imagine an experienced senior officer mistakenly giving the order. Indeed, the higher one goes up the chain of command, the less likely that the decision was made without explicit or implicit endorsement by an immediate superior. The implication, then, is that the order to shoot down MH17, if it did come from anywhere, came from the very top.
— One new piece of information that was revealed in last week’s presentation was that on the day before MH17 was shot down, a rebel commander was recorded making an emotional telephone call to a superior in the regular Russian military, complaining that his troops were vulnerable to Ukrainian air attacks—specifically, by Su-25 ground-attack jets—and that they needed Buks to protect them.
This could be interpreted as evidence that the delivery of the Buk that shot down MH17 was initiated by the militia. Alternatively, it could be a coincidence that a militia commander happened to ask for a missile system the Russian military had already decided to deploy. I think the latter is more likely, for the simple reason that the Buk missile system was not the most appropriate weapon for defending against Su-25s or the other low-altitude planes then in service against the separatists.
The Su-25 is more or less the Russian counterpart of the American A-10: it is designed for low-altitude strafing attacks, with a maximum altitude of 23,000 feet. Another plane used by the Ukrainian military at the time was the An-26 transport, with a maximum altitude of 25,000 feet. A potent defence against these planes would be the Pantsir anti-aircraft system, a mobile rocket launcher that also incorporates self-aiming quad machine guns to automatically blast low-flying attackers out of the sky. Compared to the Buk, which can reach targets above 80,000 feet high, the Pantsir can reach no higher than 26,000 feet. But unlike the Buk it can handle jets flying low under the radar, as the Su-25 can do.
It is known that Pantsirs were present and active in eastern Ukraine at the time of the shootdown. On July 14, an An-26 military transport plane was flying at about 20,000 feet when it was shot down. Ukrainian military assumed that it was downed either by a Pantsir or by an air-to-air missile fired from a Russian fighter jet flying on the other side of the Russian-Ukrainian border. On July 16, a Su-25 flying at nearly the same altitude was also shot down, again either by a Pantsir or an air-to-air missile. The blog Putin@War found satellite imagery of Pantsir units near the Ukraine-Russian border in August of 2016.
The limited reach of the Pantsir is one of the reasons that officials believed that airliners would be perfectly safe traveling higher than 32,000 feet, and so kept the airspace open to airline traffic. Buks were not known to be in the theater—and, indeed, up until the day of the shoot-down, it seems that they weren’t.
As a general principle, you do not want to send equipment into a poorly regulated battlespace that is any more powerful than it needs to be. The potential danger is too great. Retired U.S. military intelligence officer Peter Akins told me that, having had experience with many brushfire wars on its perimeter, the Russians know better than to carelessly hand out strategically powerful weapons like the Buk. “My guess is that they’re pretty carefully controlled,” he says. “We ran into real problems in Afghanistan with giving mujahadeen all those Stingers (MANPADS) that they used to take out Russian helicopters. Stingers have a relatively long shelf life. So once the mujahadeen became Taliban, if they could get to the top of a mountain in Afghanistan they could increase the operational envelope of the missile so that they could target US aircraft. So that’s one of the lessons that we learned, which is don’t give out MANPADS. I don’t know where the idea for ‘Let’s give an SA-11 to a separatist movement in the Donetsk National Sovereignty Front’ would have come from. That’s not the actions of a responsible government.”
— The weight of the JIT’s authority has, I think, severely undermined the army of Kremlin trolls who have been promoting a fog of pro-Russian conspiracy theories almost from day one. As Finnish defense writer Robin Häggblom put it, “the amount of evidence found in both open and non-open source has reached such levels that the question of whether a Russian supplied Buk shot down MH17 can now be considered a litmus test for whether you are under the influence of Russian propaganda or not.”
— The slow, grinding, meticulous building of the case against Russia feels unstoppable—and it could lead to a huge and potentially dangerous political crisis. In the wake of the JIT’s presentation, Moscow responded with such fury that the Dutch foreign minister summoned the Russian ambassador. In response, the Russian foreign minister summoned the Dutch ambassador in Moscow. Meanwhile, Australia’s foreign minister said that whoever was responsible for the shoot-down could face an international tribunal like the one who found Libyan agents guilty for the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie Scotland. Russia has already used its security council powers to block a UN investigation.
As I’ve been saying for a long time now, if it is determined that the Russian leadership deliberately ordered the shoot-down of MH17, the implications for MH370 are obvious—one of the difficulties in trying to understand MH370 is that, though it was clearly a deliberate act, there was no plausible motive. MH17 provides, if not understanding of what the motive was, clear evidence that a motive existed, in mid-2014, for a great power to take down a Malaysia Airlines 777. If an international Lockerbie-style commission is ultimately set up to assign criminal blame for Ukraine tragedy, then it is not too far out to imagine a similar body being established to do the same for MH370.
UPDATE: The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab has published a nice overview of the anti-aircraft weapons systems that Russia has deployed in Eastern Ukraine. It seems that the Buk TELAR deployed from July 16 to 18, 2014, was the only one that threatened civil air traffic over the region.
@Oleksandr
““My own feeling is that we collectively have not given enough weight to what drift analysis and bioforensics are trying to tell us”” ……. “There is certain uncertainity in drift studies, but knowing limitations and capabilities of drift models, as well as taking into consideration the bioforensics analysis, I think it is safe to impose an additional constrain on the terminus area, which should be from approximately 20S to 30S.”
As I said in early May on this blog
“Why are there still suggestions the plane was just flown into oblivion at say 20S to 30S, this is no different to flying into oblivion down where ATSB have been searching.
There does not appear to be any more logic in a 20S to 30S destination than further South, particularly if under control.
There were suggestions early on the plane could have intended landing at Banda Aceh.
The ISAT data clearly shows, unless the plane took of again soon after landing, this could not have happened.
Surely the logical conclusion is if an Indonesian landed was being contemplated such as was considered for Banda Aceh then somewhere on the 7th arc somewhere over water just to the South of a whole range of airports would be where the plane ended up.
If we accept there was a ditching then the plane would have had to go round close to the South coast of Indonesia.”
This appears to be what Geomar is saying.
GEOMAR – http://www.geomar.de/index.php?id=4&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=3972&tx_ttnews%5bbackPid%5d=185&L=1
According to an article in the German newspaper Kieler Nachrichten, scientists from the GEOMAR-Helmholtz Institute for Ocean Research in Kiel have completed a detailed drift analysis of their own in collaboration with colleagues in Great Britain. Using a different methodology to Brock McEwen they found that the locations of all five pieces found so far are compatible not with a point of origin in the current search area but instead “the plane …. must have crashed a lot further north.”
Maybe Shah miscalculated.
Leaving the Strait of Malacca and going into the Anderman Sea for a period and then turning back to BEDAX which is the last logical waypoint for an approach to Banda Aceh he could have overestimated the amount of loitering time available in the Anderman Sea
With no confirmation from the ground he could have then continued round below Sumatra.
Turning at the Cocos Islands waypoint he could have continued NE intending to land at one of number of suitable airfields in Java.
Running out of fuel he ditched in the sea less than 100nm from a Java airfield.
It fits the BTO’s with true tracks and constant ground speed.
@Oleksandr,
You said: “I would suggest you to “scan” altitudes before jumping to conclusions. I am sure you have not done this.”
How can you be sure what I do? I always try various altitudes in my fits, and altitude is a free parameter. You are wrong about my not searching versus altitude.
You said:” 1. How large? 2. Since June 2014 a number of parameters were refined, so you compare apples and oranges. I haven’t updated respective models.”
The magnetic headings I computed for your coordinates varied by 5 degrees. This difference is most likely due to differences in wind modeling.
If you have not updated your model, how do you know if the magnetic heading route is (now) consistent with the satellite data?
You also said: “3. Did you properly account for the wind at suggested altitude? If you use wind from FL350 or so, you may really get large errors.”
The route you referenced was at 11,500 m altitude, or FL377. The GDAS data are available at 250 hPa (FL340) and 200 hPa (FL387). For this evaluation I used just the wind data at 250 hPa at 2100 UTC. You did not say how you modeled the wind. One could interpolate between the 250 hPa and the 200 hPa wind data for intermediate altitudes between FL340 and FL387. It is probably also important to interpolate betrween the 3 hour GDAS data at each pressure altitude. I am in the process of adding the temporal and altitudinal interpolations to my wind model.
You said:” 4. We already saw that your model tends to give the smallest BFOs among the 4 models we compared. If it is a general trend, you may have additional 2-3 Hz discrepancy. Knowing your opinion with regard to BFO errors, you need to account for this.”
I use the same BFO offset as ATSB. Your assumed BFO offset is 2 Hz higher, which is why your BFOs are higher than mine.
@sk999
“As far as backward compatibility, the Boeing 747 can maintain constant magnetic heading, so why would a 777 be any different?”
You’re 100% correct. Not only can you dial up a constant MAG HDG in the MCP, you can also dial up a constant TRUE HDG, which is used on transpolar flights where mag var is crazy and GPS coverage is unreliable.
How either of these tracks would plot on a map depends greatly on the kind of map. For example, a true course can often plot identically to a great circle route on a Lambert map, while not so on a mercator map.
If you’re doing mercator plots after making assumptions about either MAG or TRUE HDGS, you have a lot on your plate in terms of variables (not to mention wind, temp, TAS, etc) and it’s being screwed up right and left by well-intentioned MH370 enthusiasts.
True to Mag – remember: East is least, West is best!
@Freddie
As you know, I had been suggesting a scenario very similar to yours, but was unable to reconcile it with a couple of problems. I will reiterate (iterate?) those problems for newcomers to the blog and to refresh the regulars.
1> The fuel remaining instrumentation on the 777 is quite accurate. Shah would have known he did not have enough fuel to reach an airport in Java from a Cocos way point or a way point near near the Cocos.
2> If Shah truly did not want to dump the plane in the ocean with the attendant loss of life, why did he not communicate his position or activate an ELT to give the PAX a fighting chance at survival?
These inconsistencies must be resolved in order for your narrative to hang together. It is tempting to say that the situation spiraled out of control, and there was no time for those thoughts or actions. I think that is a bit lame. As it stands, the actions in the cockpit at fuel exhaustion do not differentiate your scenario from the current search area or an area on the 7th arc between 20S and 30S.
@LaurenH
Thank you for OLPUS…yes SkyVector seems to know where that is
@Ge rijn
OK I’m with you in Broken Ridge…if a pilot can simply enter a detailed Long/Lat that is easy manual waypoint…assuming it’s not 20-30S and not near Java, that is.
On the subject of available autopilot roll-control modes, I do not think it is fruitful to speculate on what modes may or may not be available. The DSTG clearly has access to Boeing engineers and was well aware what modes were available when it produced its probability distribution. If there was, say, a magnetic heading mode that allowed the plane to make an FMT prior to 18:40 and arrive at 25 degrees south, then the DSTG’s calculated probability for 25 degrees south would not be zero.
Based on what Neil Gordon told me, I believe that that the only way the plane could have reached the seventh arc at a point not already searched would be if the plane loitered and was not already flying south at 18:40.
@DennisW
“…. the actions in the cockpit at fuel exhaustion do not differentiate your scenario from the current search area or an area on the 7th arc between 20S and 30S.”
I feel I have a major advantage with the “scenario” I outlined in that I was aware early on of details of meetings Shah had in the days before the flight.
I do not know what happened to MH370 but I do know what was intended to happen.
I obviously also do not know the answers to your questions regarding fuel indications and lack of communications.
However a flightplan based on details of these meetings gives an exact fit with the BTO’s using true tracks and constant ground speed between established waypoints round below Sumatra.
@Freddie, You wrote, “I was aware early on of details of meetings Shah had in the days before the flight.” I assume that these details came to you in a dream, or a psychic vision?
@JeffWise
“Based on what Neil Gordon told me, I believe that that the only way the plane could have reached the seventh arc at a point not already searched would be if the plane loitered and was not already flying south at 18:40.”
I’m not going to debate this one way or another because I think we can all agree that the combinations of heading and airspeed which could satisfy the rings is, effectively, infinite.
What I would like to debate, finally, is the search itself and, by association, probably Neil Gordon himself.
After months of fruitless searching for AF447, both the French and the British threw in the towel and gave all available data to Metron and its chief scientist, Dr. Lawrence Stone. Within 6 days of implementing Stone’s plan, AF447 was located in 13,000′ of water.
Yet here we are, two years into the search for MH370, and the one thing nobody ever seems to want to do is to call into question the DTSG/Fugro search. For reasons I cannot understand, they are the lone sacred cow in an affair that has spared literally no one else from attacks, suspicion, questioning and doubt.
Why is it that we cannot all coalesce around the notion of asking the world’s preeminent experts to take over the search?
@Jeff
That is a good point, and worth expounding on IMO. Since I am in an iterating mood today relative to Freddie, I will continue in that vein.
My original CI track and some subsequent published tracks, that were not highlighted on this blog, I have the aircraft at about 8N at 19:41. Likewise Iannello and Godfrey have the plane at 8.5N at 19:41 in their latest McMurdo way point path paper. While I never proposed a loiter scenario, choosing instead to throw up my hands (and other things) relative to events between 18:25 and 19:40, it does attempt to explain what might have happened.
The DSTG has the aircraft close to the equator at 19:41 as does Inmarsat (actually on the equator) in their classic JoN paper. Most other analyses I have looked at follow this trend. The reason is simple. You cannot get the flight path to work, even with very relaxed BFO constraints, for more Northerly locations without the baked in assumption of a very late FMT. Once you assume a 19:41 position close to the equator, the die is pretty much cast unless you postulate some pretty bizarre flight paths under active pilot control.
8 degrees represents some 500 statute miles.
@Matt
You raise a good point. Stone has a reputation in forensics of this type, but there is a significant contrast between AF447 which was an accident, and actively broadcasting ACARS data to the end, and MH370 which I claim is the act of a rogue pilot and went dark for 6 hours or so.
Frankly, colleagues I have approached who routinely engage in calculations of the type we have been doing for the last couple of years declined to get involved in any way. The problem is truly under-constrained, and anyone skilled in the art quickly (in less than 10 minutes or so) recognizes that it is a rat’s nest from the get-go.
Dr. Stone, being the coin-operated analyst he is, would probably sign up for the task. My sense is that he would come up with a similar result as the DSTG which result is not all the unlike results obtained with non-Bayesian methods before the DSTG ever got involved.
Hey, I am all for it. Certainly opening up the investigation (and the information we do not have) to other third parties cannot be a bad thing.
@Matt Moriarty,
Thanks for your excellent questions. The speeds I quoted were actually averages from 18:22 to 00:11. The first few minutes after 18:22 are flown at LRC, but this changes to Holding at 18:29. I use the same tables you quoted. I take the Trent 892 FCOM Fuel Flow number and divide by 1.05 because a racetrack is not being flown as assumed in the table. The Holding speed is in KIAS which I convert to TAS depending on the altitude and temperature (which varies with altitude and also with latitude on this night). The KIAS is not constant with weight/time, and thus the air speed is also not a constant in either TAS or Mach. For example, at FL362 the TAS drops from 453 kts (~M0.77) at 19:41 to about 420 knots (~M0.73) at 00:11 (depending on the exact route). The speed at FL362 (at ~228 K), of course, is slightly higher than at FL350.
@Jeff
“I assume that these details came to you in a dream, or a psychic vision?”
I have done a lot of things over the years but I have not been particularly creative and I do not make things up.
@Dr.BobbyUllich
Ok thx. I compute the weight at 18:29 to be about 209,500kg. What’s your figure?
Regardless, I’m still curious as to why you make the assumption that holding speed parameters were closely followed but absolutely zero attention was paid to following optimum hold altitudes. After all, what is the point of flying a holding speed if not to extract the max endurance? In your scenario, the plane is 11,000′ too high to do that at the moment of fuel exhaustion.
At 18:29 – when you posit the decision to go to holding speed was executed – the plane is a full 15,000′ too high to extract max endurance.
Why holding speed? What’s the point? Why would any pilot fly holding speed at the wrong altitude? What is gained?
At some point, some rational explanation for the selection of holding speed – even if it does involve human factors – does need to be inserted into the process.
@Freddie
Don’t take it personally. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. No one is doubting your integrity. The question is how to use information that really is in the hearsay category.
You knew full well the reaction you would get in this domain frustrating as that might be to you.
@Freddie
Why drop such bait if you’re not going to/are unable to follow through with anything that can be used?
@DennisW
“My sense is that he would come up with a similar result as the DSTG which result is not all the unlike results obtained with non-Bayesian methods before the DSTG ever got involved.”
Yeah, there were a lot of guys saying that before he found AF447. You should really look him up before you make pronouncements like that. He found the hydrogen bombs we lost off of Spain. He found the USS Scorpion. He found the SS Central America. He found AF447 when a team with more experience than the DTSG had failed.
You think MH370 is a rat’s nest? Stone didn’t have BTO data on the Central America. He had newspaper clippings from 150 years ago. Little blurry articles on microfiche with an anecdote about the sea heights some other boat 100nm away experienced the week the SS CA sank. His data was one and a half centuries old and some of it was completely fractured. The guy would have given his left arm for a fraction of the Inmarsat data we currently have. And he still found the wreck.
And he’s sitting in DC, working on something else. Criminal if you ask me.
Worse yet, the failed search has become, for many among us, a spark to reignite pet theories. This is not only counterproductive, it’s kind of immoral from the perspective of the families of the missing.
So, again, my question is: Don’t the MH370 families deserve at this point to have the top guy on the planet take a crack at the thus-far-failed-search, just like he did in 2010 off the west coast of Africa?
DennisW is all for it! Anyone else??
@Gecin
“…….unable to follow through with anything that can be used?”
What did you have in mind that I have not already explained in the last few months?
Seems Freddie and Dennis are similar theories except Freddie has the flight hanging out further north.
If the flight was a planned but failed conspiracy with accomplices on the ground, then the flight south might have been more random or just heading in the direction of McMurdo (per Iannello/Godfrey starting at Car Nicobar 8.5N).
Freddie’s argument does not seem to account for the home simulator cases to SIO.
If the flight was more of a pre-planned pilot suicide, then the flight south may have been targeting a specific hard-to-find location in the undersea mountains. In this case we are probably looking for evidence that Z knew the undersea maps. The actual home simulator path (apparently) starting at about 10N/90E goes through the Broken Ridge.
Jeff,
“On the subject of available autopilot roll-control modes, I do not think it is fruitful to speculate on what modes may or may not be available.”
Then can you help to put dot in this, perhaps by interviewing someone from Boeing? Or some experienced pilot of B777?
“The DSTG clearly has access to Boeing engineers and was well aware what modes were available when it produced its probability distribution.”
It was not in their scope of work. They did what they were contracted to do, nothing more. In this particular case they considered modes they were asked to. And this is consistent with ATSB Jun/Aug 2014 footnotes.
Re “If there was, say, a magnetic heading mode that allowed the plane to make an FMT prior to 18:40 and arrive at 25 degrees south, then the DSTG’s calculated probability for 25 degrees south would not be zero.”
I would suggest you reading their set of assumptions. The critical one is the limit of M0.73, which cuts out northern area, likely including those corresponding to the magnetic heading scenarios they considered. In other words DSTG made a set of likely incompatible assumptions. I would like to ask: on purpose or by mistake? If DSTG allowed for arbitrary turns, why did their results miss results of ATSB June 2014 “data driven” approach?
Matt Moriarty,
“I’m curious about which Boeing tables you’re using to figure consumption in a hold.”
The LRC tables are from Boeing FCOM, PI.21.3. My FCOM version no. is D632W001-TBC dated June 16,2008.
Sk999,
“Why would you build a system that does not work according to how the documentation says it works?”
What documentation? Footnote in ATSB report? If you have relevant documentation, could you share it?
Re: “The FCOM is unambiguous”
I would appreciate if you could point out where it is unambiguously stated in FCOM.
Light relief-a plane which flew itself after getting rid of its pilot: http://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/plane-flew-pilot-ejected-f-106a-flew-miles-landing-gently-field.html
Bobby,
“How can you be sure what I do? I always try various altitudes in my fits, and altitude is a free parameter. You are wrong about my not searching versus altitude.”
On Sep 19 you asked about GDAS data at some altitude. It takes quite significant effort write 3D time-dependant interpolation scripts and scan all the altitudes for the two SPD modes. And if you combine this with possible AFDS pitch modes and necessity to consider fuel consumption, the task is getting even more time-consuming. I do not see how you could conduct a thorough study in as short as 3 weeks. If you did it, could you provide max BFO and BTO errors, say for each 1 km altitude from 5 to 14 km for flat FL scenarios, both SPD modes? Copy/paste 20 numbers?
Also you just wrote ” I am in the process of adding the temporal and altitudinal interpolations to my wind model.” Then how can you jump to the conclusions? Btw, I accounted for time-space varying wind from the very beginning. Of course I can be criticised for using bi-linear interpolation up to now, but this is another story.
RE “If you have not updated your model, how do you know if the magnetic heading route is (now) consistent with the satellite data?”
It is a subject of accepted BTO and BFO errors. If it was already “good enough”, the worst shift by order of a few Hz (updated model vs old one) would not dramatically change conclusions. Of course, I might be wrong. That is why I want to see your BFO errors. Then is why I want to know what exactly DSTG did, so that magnetic scenarios do not appear in their results at all.
Re: “I use the same BFO offset as ATSB. Your assumed BFO offset is 2 Hz higher, which is why your BFOs are higher than mine.”
I and Yap (at least his early calculators) used BFO bias recommended in ATSB June 2014 report. But I recall we disagree on the uncertainty in the BFO bias. Anyhow, given the plots presented by DSTG, 2Hz difference is negligible. Though you will probably again disagree.
@Matt Moriarty
I sure agree it cann’t be a bad idea to take a top-expert like this into the investigation at the moment.
I don’t agree though the search has been not all but a failure.
Progress has been made even when the plane is not found in the current search area.
Then they at least know it’s not there.
This is probably not because the data are far from reality or their calculations have been wrong.
IMO it most probably means the assumption the search was based on was wrong:
the assumption the flight turned into a ghost flight after FMT.
There was and is no logical reason or evidence at all to choose this assumption above the logical/normal assumption the flight was piloted actively from beginning till end.
IMO with the objective to let the plane vanish. All actions/facts point to this after IGARI.
@DrBobbyUlich says this is not rational and I agree a rational motive cann’t be found (yet).
But rational or not this is what actualy happened to MH370; the plane vanished.
Further progres has been made with the drift-modelling based on drifters and found debris.
All this models point to a crash area north of ~35S up to ~25S.
More northern latitudes don’t fit the drifing time frames or the lack of debris found on Indonesian or other more northern shores.
The debris till now show IMO a relatively horizontal level entry in the water. Not a high speed dive but more a (violent) ditch-like event like Ethiopian flight 961.
IMO what’s needed most now is a different approach based on a more logical assumption:
an all human controlled flight till the end.
I sure would like to know what approach
Dr. Lawrence Stone would take on this.
Freddie,
“Why are there still suggestions the plane was just flown into oblivion at say 20S to 30S, this is no different to flying into oblivion down where ATSB have been searching.”
A dosen of the drift studies suggest that the current search area is very unlikely. GEOMAR is a bad example – their approach is a-priory flawed/wrong, so I do not count on it at all. But there are at least 3 ‘good’ models, which indicate similar results. And this result seems to be consistent with what barnacles tell us.
That is why there is a huge difference between scenarios, the terminal point of which is in the area 20-30S, and those, terminating in the current search area.
Jeff,
To make it clear with regard to what DSTG did, consider an example: you need to get from point A to point B at distance 1000 miles by either car or airplane. So you consider:
1. Vehicle options: car or airplane;
2. Speed: 200 to 500 mph.
As a result you conclude that your arrival time must be between 2 to 5 hours. An optional travel by the car escapes your result.
@Freddie:
I am back since a couple of months and haven’t seen your contributions. Could you give a short update on what you know? Were you in KL prior to this event?
@Matt Moriarty
Is anyone else up for it? No way José! MH370 is entirely unlike any of the other cases cited, and its all down to the infuriatingly underconstrained, and underconstrainable BFO.
The ATSB have done just about as good job as anyone could, with just the ISAT data to go on, together with thing like, available autopilot modes, expected endurance etc, as supplied by Boeing.
The overriding problem for the ATSB, all along, has been reaching a consensus within the Search Strategy Working Group on what assumptions to make when choosing the available non-ISAT constraints. Basically what the hell was going on in the cockpit! Just reading the eternal arguments going on in this Blog, gives you some idea just what a problem they’ve got. Everone has a personal approach to the problem, result; paralysis on the consensus front!
But we mustn’t forget the plane’s owners, the Malaysians. They are patently unable to fully cooperate, for whatever reason (well, actually quite a few of us here can guess the probable reason, but that’s a story in itself)
So perhaps you’re beginning to get some idea of the problem?
This is my perception: ATSB cannot bring themselves to cross the Rubicon and accept the weight of evidence, observed and circumstantial, that Z planned and carried out something never done before. Then if they allowed themselves to say “well, if this was his intention (I’ve discussed that many times here, too many times) then how would he have gone about it? In other words, do a Sherlock Holmes and get into the mind of the prime suspect. You can guess see how difficult this would be, Politically.
The unpalatable truth is, this is the only way they’re going to find a needle in a haystack – first, they have to define the haystack, the haystack that Z would have aimed for.
@ROB:
The ATSB has evidence that you don’t have access to: the radar data containing
regular estimates of latitude, longitude and altitude at 10 second intervals from
16:42:27 to 18:01:49.
That evidence tells them that the prime suspect is not so obvious as you think he is.
@Matt Moriarty, My understanding is that Metron has been working with MH370 search officials since 2014. That’s why they can’t comment on the case.
Also, IMO it wasn’t some mystical data-whispering that led them to divine the location of AF447; they simply relaxed the assumption that the black-boxer pingers functioned during the first thirty days.
@Matt Moriarty
B52 Crash Spain/Med
The search for the fourth bomb was carried out by means of a novel mathematical method, Bayesian search theory, led by Dr. Craven.[10] This method assigns probabilities to individual map grid squares, then updates these as the search progresses. Initial probability input is required for the grid squares, and these probabilities made use of the fact that a local fisherman, Francisco Simó Orts,[3] popularly known since then as “Paco el de la bomba” (“Bomb Paco” or “Bomb Frankie”),[11] witnessed the bomb entering the water at a certain location.
USS Scorpion (SSN-589)The public search continued with a team of mathematical consultants led by Dr. John Piña Craven, the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Navy’s Special Projects Division. They employed the methods of Bayesian search theory, initially developed during the search for a hydrogen bomb lost off the coast of Palomares, Spain, in January 1966 in the Palomares B-52 crash.
SS Central America
The ship was located by the use of Bayesian search theory and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) operated by the Columbus-America Discovery Group of Ohio, that was sent down on 11 September 1988.[3] Significant amounts of gold and artifacts were recovered and brought to the surface by another ROV built specifically for the recovery. Tommy Thompson led the group.
No mention of Dr. Lawrence Stone in any of these events. Unless I am looking at different events.
Info sourced from Wikipedia.
Cheers Tom L
@ROB
If there only could be consensus on taking serious the assumption/possibility MH370 was actively piloted/human controlled till the end would be a step forward IMO.
Leaving out the question who and why for the time being. Which is impossible to prove anyway without the black boxes and other information we do not have.
Remember there were two licenced B777 pilots on the plane. One of them also could have been forced by a hijacker. There is even still the possibility of a major mechanical event at IGARI or at/after 18:22 IMO.
There is just no way to be sure what happened and who controlled the plane after IGARI.
Just consensus on the assumption the plane was controlled by a pilot after IGARI till the end would be enough to start another usefull approach into the investigation IMO.
@Ge Rijn
Firstly, I apologize for talking to the way I did. It was quite frankly, inexcusable. All things considered, I would think your intellect is every bit the equal of mine.
Getting back to the subject in hand, I think you have just illustrated my point! There is absolutely no mileage to be gained in pursuing the mechanical failure issue. It just didn’t happen. There is no evidence to support it. All the evidence goes in the premeditated pilot intervention scenario. We will never get anywhere with the problem, if we don’t face up to what the evidence is telling us. I cannot make it any clearer than that.
@Oleksandr, The drift analyses you mentioned are interesting and agreed that they need further analyses. My observation (for what it is worth), is that only one piece showed barnacle growth (which says a lot about water temperatures) and the others did not. We do not know when the pieces detached from the fuselage though. Given that water temperatures are lower during fall/winter in the SIO the other pieces, if they detached later would not have barnacle growth or much less, drifting through colder waters at that time.
@Ge Rijn, You mentioned Ethiopan flight 961 being a more violent ditch. The fuselage broke up leaving a lot of cabin debris. If 9M-MRO ditched violently, wouldn’t it have broken up? What are the chances of that not happening? Idk. No debris has been found to date on Indonesian or Australian shores. This is telling, IMO. As for rationaility, the knife cuts both ways. It is just as irrational to assume a ghost flight as it is not to. As far as the evidence shows, and the fact that any mechanical failures have pretty much been rules out, the flight was manned until FMT. After that, its anyone’s guess IMO. If there was “loitering” then the ATSB would not being searching where they are now or they know more than we do.
@Gijsbrecht, If the ATSB is privy to radar data others are not, are you saying they are searching in the right place then? And that their assumptions are correct? Or am I misreading your post?
@Matt M, Time is of the essence here and there is a lot to say for bringing in people with a track record and experience. We will not know whether this has already happened or not. I am convinced a lot has not been shared with the public. At the end of December, the search will be finished and wrapped up. All parties will be done with it unless funding can be found to continue. This is not likely., IMO.
@Freddie, Unless you can substantiate what you say, it goes into the “sucked out of my thumb” category. Don’t know why DennisW was being so nice about it.
@Keffertje, I had to hand-approve your comments because you misspelled your email address. Just FYI.
”There is even still the possibility of a major mechanical event at IGARI or at/after 18:22 IMO.”
Or Shah was testing out something on the aircraft (left bus) and messed up. Resulting in his death and 238 other people.
But i believe he was in control till the very end. Pointing the nose down sometime after 00:19 and smashing the aircraft into thousands of pieces.
@TomLindsay
When it comes to google, practice makes perfect. Keep practicing!
@Keffertje @ROB
I consider an all human controlled piloted flight till the end far more rational than a partial ghost-flight.
For the first would be the normal scenario to assume from any flight, accident or not.
If you want to change a normal scenario into an extra-ordinary one-in-a-million scenario you need to come up with very strong evidence to build your case (cq. search) on.
There was/is no evidence at all to justify the assumption of a partial ghost-flight after FMT that we know of.
Maybe you and others are right the ATSB knows of such evidence which is not disclosed then.
If they don’t have this evidence their search is based on a far more irrational assumption IMO.
On the debris and barnacles:
I assume all debris seperated/detached at the same time during the entry in the water.
Maybe only solid, lighter than water objects floated to the surface shortly after the sinking.
Objects like the LCD seat-mounting f.i. Everything else sinking with air in it would be crushed and/or air squeezed out by water-pressure; honeycomb-panels, luggage, bottles of any kind and so on.
Looking at the latest debris though I assume the plane and the fuselage possibly broke-up in two or three big pieces. Then probably the tail-section seperated. In a more violent ditch-event this part would seperate more likely than other fuselage parts.
Which could explain the vertical stabilizer piece and the ‘no-step’-piece.
Many pieces show traces left by barnacles IMO (the small circular calcite rings). The barnacles disappeared in most cases after beaching before they were found IMO.
From most pieces we don’t know when they arrived on shore. From those obviously colonized by barnacles we can safely assume they arrived shortly before they were found. The flaperon and the RR-piece are the most telling examples of this (RR-piece proved by photos).
I still await Jeff’s update on the barnacle-issue but I assume the problem can be explained by the shifts of ocean-surface temperatures following the winter/summer cicles and the route and time-frame the debris took coming from between ~35S/~25S and ~90E/~100E.
This is a very important issue for it can potentially narrow the crash area within ~5 degrees of latitude and longitude IMO.
@ROB
Thank you for your brave and kind words.
And I feel complimented you regard me not more dumb as yourself ;-))
It’s worth to push on isn’t it and keep the discussion edgy.
Contributions here are amazing.
With a big credit to Jeff moderating this all.
@jeffW, I apologise. Will make sure that doesn’t happen again. My buttery fingers:(
@Keffertje @all
On a Dutch news-site it’s told the mandate of the search ends in June 2017:
http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/4332823/gevonden-wrakstuk-mauritius-van-toestel-vlucht-mh370.html:
‘De huidige zoekmissie loopt in juni van 2017 af.’
Translated quote: ‘the current search-mission ends in June 2017’
I don’t know where this comes from but this news-site is generally well informed on MH370 from the start.
@JeffWise
“Also, IMO it wasn’t some mystical data-whispering that led them to divine the location of AF447; they simply relaxed the assumption that the black-boxer pingers functioned during the first thirty days.”
Ok. But isn’t that akin to saying “The little Dutch boy who stuck his thumb in the levee didn’t save Holland because of all the engineering that came before him.” Changing one detail that results in success seems to me to be the mark of an expert.
And as to Metron being “involved”? If that were the case, I think the Slate article you’re paraphrasing would have read quite differently.
@Matt, I don’t know what Slate article you’re referring to. I believe that Metron is involved because way back when I tried for an interview and they said they couldn’t give one because they were helping with the investigation.
While I don’t share your view that Metron has unique abilities, I do agree that it’s high time that the investigation was opened up to new expertise. Frankly I wouldn’t mind if they just handed it over to the Dutch, who are doing a crackerjack job with MH17 IMO.
@Ge Rijn
Yes I agree, Jeff does a great job.
@Rob
“So perhaps you’re beginning to get some idea of the problem?”
I have an extremely solid grasp of the problem, thx. And I happen to be in the Z camp as well.
My very good friend did a documentary about the SS Central America search. I’m seeking his permission to link to it here but I can tell you from having seen it that the 150 year old data Stone had to work with was orders of magnitude weaker than the data we have on MH370.
Part of the “problem” that I’m trying to convey to you is that Stone would very likely have used Bayes to DEFINE the assumptions in the first place, rather than simply applying Bayes to pre-set assumptions which, we can all agree, have been based largely on human rationalizations.
Perhaps now you’re getting some idea of the problem?
@JeffWise
“Frankly I wouldn’t mind if they just handed it over to the Dutch, who are doing a crackerjack job with MH17 IMO.”
I’d be thrilled to see that too. All for it.