On January 31, Seabed Constructor vanished from the ship-tracking websites that various observers had been monitoring. This set up a minor international tizzy, with a number of outlets publishing headlines such as “MH370 mystery deepens as search vessel vanishes off radar for three days sending conspiracy theorists into a frenzy.”
The ship had been acting strangely in the hours leading up to its disappearance, sailing around in a big circle and then steaming in a beeline towards southwestern part of the search area, where it had started its work weeks before. It was in the midst of this beeline run that its AIS tracking system was apparently turned off. (This disappearance had nothing to do with radar, but whatever.)
Seabed Constructor reappeared a few days later, this time heading for a scheduled resupply stop in Perth. Ocean Infinity offered no explanation for what had happened. Some of the more imaginative independent MH370 researchers speculated that the ship had surreptiously been plundering shipwrecks found during the first seabed search.
On February 8, the notoriously unreliable Australian aviation journalist Geoffrey Thomas wrote a story in Perth Now claiming that the explanation was that the searchers had found found some interesting “geological formations” and “had returned to revisit those points of interest discovered on its first sweep and turned off its satellite tracking system so as not to give the relatives false hopes.”
Coming from Thomas, this almost certainly had to be untrue. Sure enough, more evidence has now emerged, and it appears that some kind of equipment fault was to blame.
The eighth search update released this morning by the Malaysian government reveals that “Earlier during the underwater search operation, an ROV was damaged and a decision was made to ‘wet store’ the ROV to minimize disruption to search operations.” Probably whoever wrote this meant AUV, autonomous underwater vehicle, rather than ROV, remotely operated vehicle, since ROVs are used to hone in on a target once it’s been identified. So far the search has found no targets.
Most likely, what happened is that at the end of January one of the AUVs went rogue, Seabed Constructor sailed around trying to find it, realized that it was probably at the southwestern corner of the search area, sailed down to go look for it–and while doing so realized that its bizarre behavior was being watched and so shut off the AIS to avoid further embarrassment.
Yesterday Richard Cole tweeted that Seabed Constructor had apparently deployed seven AUVS at the southern end of the southern leg of the secondary search zone, then dashed down to where the AUV lay on the seabed and deployed its ROV to retrieve it. “Probably the most complex search configuration we have seen so far,” he observed.
Earlier this morning Seabed Constructor finished its ROV work and hurried northward to gather up the AUVs, which were nearing the end of their endurance.
I’m guessing that the AUVs have a feature whereby if they lose communications with the mother ship they go to a predesignated point and rest on the seabed to conserve energy until they can be recovered.
I love the euphemism “wet store,” by the way. This is a major advancement in nautical terminology. If it had been around in 1912 then the White Star Line could have just said that the Titanic had been put in wet storage.
In other news, the latest report says that Seabed Constructor has now scanned 24,000 sq km. That doesn’t mean it’s 1,000 sq km from finishing the designated search area, though, because it still has to do the “southern leg” segments of the secondary and tertiary zones. These are not large however and should not take more than a few days.
@Peter Norton, You’ve asked me to delete your post, so I have done so. As to the earlier post by another contributor, I don’t wish to delete that, since I think it’s important to allow critical language, even if it may seem excessively cutting to the recipient.
In 2010, SAFEE(Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment) a study conducted mainly by the French (SAGEM, GIGN) and Dutch (NLR) explored the possibility of AUTOMATIC CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT for a safe return
Post 9/11, European security and aviation specialists conducted an ‘integrated project designed to restore full confidence in the air transport industry. The overall vision for SAFEE was the construction of advanced aircraft security systems designed to prevent on-board threats.’.
Study was done 2004-2008, published 2010.
https://trimis.ec.europa.eu/project/security-aircraft-future-european-environment
This project involved 32 partners from 12 European countries (including Airbus, but not Boeing). Main participants were Airbus Deutschland & France, BAE systems, Thales Avionics, Sagem Défense Sécurité and NLR (Dutch).
The following quote was intriguing and applicable to MH370:
Conclusion/Questions
The Europeans clearly identified vulnerabilities in the security of the aircraft, and In-Flight Security Officers were privy to this knowledge.
– did the scenarios run by the participants leaked or stolen?
In 2010, relations between Russia and the West took a turn for the worse. During this time, Poland & Ukraine were preparing for EURO 2012.
– were the results of the study disclosed to pro-Russian Ukrainian SBU which was in charge of security for EURO 2012?
– were these then passed on to the Russians?
@JeffWise, I apologize for interjecting this comment especially if it has been discussed earlier…However, I find it a bit extraordinary for President Obama to visit Malaysia several weeks after the disappearance of MH370. Why would a sitting US president visit a country that his predecessors have not bothered to in nearly 50 years? Did the US know something and therefore the visit by Obama? Also, there is a report that the Chinese government softened their stand on Malaysia after Obama’s visit…I just find the timing of his visit a bit intriguing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/ukraine-mh370-dominate-obamas-malaysia-trip/2014/04/27/d2ddaf68-cdfc-11e3-a714-be7e7f142085_video.html?utm_term=.bac9b9b87e18
@Sajik UK. Stencils.
Graham Leishman (20th, 10:29 PM) thought they were the same.
Scott O (20th, 11:01 PM) thought they were different.
I (21st 12:560 agreed in part with Scott O, added a comment much the same as you have about the different ‘R’ spacing, concluding that maybe camera angles explained it. I agree that in scaling various ratios of dimensions they do not match.
However, the stencils are very similar at least and very different from the Boeing. Maybe they did use slightly different stencils, from whenever it was they started with their use.
If it could be shown that others than Malaysia Airlines used a similar background paint and similar stencils on engines with similar intake cowls, ‘Roy’ no longer being unique to that airline, that would seriously weaken the ATSB conclusion.
As you say, if a close examination of ‘Roy’ suggested it could be a forgery that would be a problem indeed. Mind, the same could be said of identifying markings some other recovered items.
Bear in mind that the ATSB conclusion was qualified; “….almost certainly from the aircraft registered 9M-MRO.
SAFE AUTOMATIC FLIGHT BACK AND LANDING OF AIRCRAFT (SOFIA): was the Reboot of SDU on MH370 a requirement for automatic landing?
http://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS2008/PAPERS/428.PDF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_terminal_information_service
Conclusion
It is becoming increasingly clear, the reboot was was probably intentional, and was probably part of the whole scenario being played out by the perps to make the world believe there was an emergency on board MH370 that required the plane to autoland at the nearest available airport.
The perps also want the world to believe the autoland procedure went disastrously wrong, and instead of flying to the nearest airport, the plane hopped across the Malacca Straight before finally pointing to the SIO, probably McMurdo, Antartica, as Captain. Shah’s simulator results suggest.
What is also clear is that while Jeff Wise’s Russian perpetrated hijack theory is on firmer ground than ever before, his Spoof theory is getting less and less credible as more and more information becomes available about standard airline security procedures.
Question to Jeff Wise: we know who are against (the Russians/Kremlin), but whose side are you for? The travelling public, or big business/Deep State?
@Sajik UK. My fourth line above should start, “I, (21st 12:56 AM) agreed..”, and that sentence should finish, “…or use of another but similar stencil”.
SAFEE or SOFIA project are cool ideas however they are dangerous because of the potential for aircraft to be hijacked from the ground.
Now. What is the chances this or BHUAP could exist & that information is not made public knowledge for obvious reasons. IF Mh370 was a state sponsored attack by day Russia then any ability to control the aircraft remotely would not only be known to them but they would have the ability to carry out the procedure.
I’m not saying this is what was done & I’m still of the opinion that BHUAP wasn’t a factor but hey. It would seem anything is possible in this day & age.
@Ken, Obama’s trip to Malaysia may well have included a discussion of MH370, but it is hard to believe that the two leaders would have discussed anything of a classified nature, as there seems to have been some concern in Washington over the corruption scandals swirling around Najib. In fact, it seems he was there for an ASEAN meeting, as a show of strength against China’s South China Sea ambitions, and to cement Malaysia’s help in the fight against ISIL. Details at the link below and a brief excerpt:
https://thediplomat.com/2015/12/lessons-from-obamas-southeast-asia-trip/
“Despite its domestic challenges, which include not only the reported crackdown on dissent but also scandals swirling around over $600 million deposited into Najib’s personal accounts, Najib’s government has proven an effective partner for the United States in counterterrorism cooperation, in building a potential deterrent to Chinese activities in the South China Sea, and on other strategic issues. (In a new piece, The Diplomat details the extent of U.S.-Malaysia counterterrorism cooperation.)…with the Malaysian opposition in turmoil, and no obvious contenders to Najib emerging within the governing coalition, it may appear to the White House that there is little alternative to the prime minister anyway.”
@Scott O, Thank you!
Facts have identical worth by the nature of being “indisputable.” It is the composition of facts which alters value.
Both being factually based, why would the sim data found on Captain Zaharie’s computer be viewed as more credible than the compilation of data showing the prodigious improbability that MH370 was pilot suicide.
@Susie Crowe
Well, certainly Victor has recently revealed that he has doubts about the probability
of his Shah-Done-It theory – in a post he set out that he now
considers it only 75% likely that his theory is correct.
Therefore, when a new poster pops up, like a puppet from behind the couch, on his
forum when it is attempting to explore theories other than his Shah-Done-It
theory, to remind that forum that they are “almost in no doubt” about Victors findings,
it is charitably kind of Victor not to inform them that they are now more of a believer
in his theory than he is!
@Susie Crowe:
“Facts have identical worth by the nature of being ‘indisputable’. It is the composition of facts which alters value.”
Yes, ‘spin’ is always used when factual information is put together to build a narrative. It is a classic technique to muddy the waters – a variant of the of the classic ‘divide and conquer’ rule. However, in the case of MH370, I suspected from day one that this saga was an Intel black-op, so none of the evidence presented would be ‘indisputable’.
Susie quote:
“Both being factually based, why would the sim data found on Captain Zaharie’s computer be viewed as more credible than the compilation of data showing the prodigious improbability that MH370 was pilot suicide.”
My opinion, after much inconclusive research, is that Shah was ‘thrown under the bus’ to protect First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid from suspicion, as his father is a very high ranking member of Najib Razak’s government and involved with 1MDB. Not saying Fariq was the culprit, he just needed to be ‘defocused’ in the narrative to prevent any potential embarrassment – guilty or not.
@buyerninety. Well put.
Thats not to say that something constructive can’t come out of that forum. For
instance, if we look here;
http://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/11/25/possible-mh370-debris-seen-in-aerial-search-in-spring-2014/
we see in Victor’s topic blurb, in the last paragraph Victor states;
“Meanwhile, David Griffin of CSIRO has agreed to do some ‘backtrack’ drift
calculations to see where along the 7th arc the debris would have originated
if the debris was from MH370. As these results are very relevant to future
search efforts, I will make the results available when I can.”
As the debris mentioned seemed to relate to debris spotted circa 29S, 28S, etc., where the search is headed to, and as I don’t recall Victor ever posting
such information, (do you?), perhaps it would be worth enquiring if any such
calculations were received from Dr. Griffin?
Cheers
@Boris: Interesting info about FO Fariq. I’ve long suspected that.
@Boris Tabaksplatt
…”Shah was ‘thrown under the bus’ to protect First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid from suspicion, as his father is a very high ranking member of Najib Razak’s government and involved with 1MDB.”
That is a very interesting observation if true. May explain why his mobile logged on at Penang. Forgot to turn it off?
@buyerninety:
“…Victor has recently revealed that he has doubts about the probability of his Shah-Done-It theory – in a post he set out that he now considers it only 75% likely that his theory is correct…”
Does he say why he is now more doubtful than he was before? Be interesting to know exactly what changed his mind.
@Boris: “Be interesting to know exactly what changed his mind.”
I think various unanswered questions about the origin of the recovered file fragments. For example, the “extraordinary coincidence” that Windows autonomously created a shadow volume on 3 February 2014, the day Captain ZS was piloting flights from Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar, Indonesia and back. Or that no attempt was made to recover the complete files, which is the very purpose of the shadow volume service.
…“extraordinary coincidence” that Windows autonomously created a shadow volume on 3 February 2014, the day Captain ZS was piloting flights from Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar, Indonesia and back.
That’s a bit suspicious. Presumably someone else must have created the volume.
@SteveBarratt: “Presumably someone else must have created the volume.”
… and the .FLT files, and deleted and wiped those files?
My earlier comment speaking of probability was regarding precedent.
As I have mentioned before, statistically, pilot suicide is astronomically rare and has NEVER occurred with a pilot background as clean as Captain Zaharie’s, NEVER.
When considering only facts and not conjecture, it is a heck of a statistic to overlook.
@Boris Tabaksplatt
I think he is simply ‘hedging his bets’ (figuratively speaking). Possibly he may
have previously believed that (by our current time) if his theory were correct, that
other evidence would have emerged to support it. That hasn’t happened, obviously.
@Susie Crowe
What is your ‘one sentence personal theory’ as to the reason for the loss of MH370?
@Gysbreght:
“…the “extraordinary coincidence” that Windows autonomously created a shadow volume on 3 February 2014, the day Captain ZS was piloting flights from Kuala Lumpur to Denpasar…”
Wow, if true that’s a wee bit of a show-stopper for the Shah done it conjecture! Many thanks.
That is the million dollar question, isn’t it.
It is my nature to be very opinionated and I have run the gamut to determine my theory.
@buyerninety
My “one sentence personal theory” is,
I don’t have one. The viable possibilities are simply not refined enough for me.
It’s weak I know, and sitting on that fence is beginning to hurt my ass, but it’s where I’ll remain until compelled off by steadfast belief.
Erm, maybe we are overestimating them…
https://mobile.twitter.com/Reuters/status/981121633023705088/video/1
My apologies if this is too off-topic.
@susie crowe, my sense is that certain people are more comfortable weighting the validity of numbers–just by virtue of being numbers and so seemingly more concrete than the squishiness of human behavior.
Whle pilot suicide is exceedingly rare, vanishingly so given the number of flights in a given year, that does not tell us whether Shah would be more or less likely to be one of them.
What does tell us that is his demographic, his behavior, his political and religious commitments, etc. For whatever reason, even when the weight of these becomes preponderant in showing his likely innocence relative to a few partially erased data points on a hard drive, those people can’t see the scale dip. That is true even when those numbers are open to even more interpretation than the behavior may be.
I don’t think it’s malicious, but rather a blind spot, a discomfort that the world is not always reducible to rational numbers and unwillingness to believe that a mass of circumstantial evidence is as valid as a feather’s weight of singularly interpreted concrete evidence.
@buyerninety. “As the debris mentioned seemed to relate to debris spotted circa 29S, 28S, etc., where the search is headed to, and as I don’t recall Victor ever posting such information, (do you?), perhaps it would be worth enquiring if any such calculations were received from Dr. Griffin?
No. However I do not feel comfortable as a go-between JW and VI sites.
A thought for you. It was never obvious to me that you were banned or contributions delayed there and it might be worth you checking that out.
@buyerninety
“That is the million dollar question, isn’t it.”
A clarification I was refering to the cause of the flight and not my opinion.
@Boris Tabaksplatt
I’ve come to believe not enough attention has been paid to 1MDB and its potential role in the missing aircraft. There’s a connection to be teased out between the fund and the investors in it, who included the United Arab Emirates. and, I believe, by its proxy, the Russia Direct Investment Fund. More curious to me still is how immediately after representatives of the U.A.E., the Kremlin and the newly installed Trump administration in the person of Eric Prince (formerly of Blackwater, now of Frontier, interestingly located in Hong Kong) met secretly in the Seychelles, Malaysia committed to paying back the investment made by the U.A.E. Perhaps I am seeing coincidences where no connections exist, but I find it curious.
@susie crowe
“pilot suicide is astronomically rare and has NEVER occurred with a pilot background as clean as Captain Zaharie’s, NEVER”
Oh yes it has.
Pilot suicide numbers are probably off by an order of magnitude in my estimation.
Employer organizations and the family use lawyers and PR flaks to throw up sufficient doubt so that there is no conclusive finding of suicide.
There is so much at stake for all concerned that the investigatory system effectively applies no reasonable doubt as a criteria.
@Scott O.
“While pilot suicide is exceedingly rare, vanishingly so given the number of flights in a given year, that does not tell us whether Shah would be more or less likely to be one of them.”
As precedent it does.
Callously stated, my life is unaffected by Captain Zaharie’s guilt or innocence, whether he was a saint or a lunatic in life is inconsequential. I saw that impartiality as a gift to study his life without bias. When unscrupulous reporting of him began showing a blatant disregard for truth, I began to defend his character as defined by factual information.
Take a deep breathe Jeff, I could not stop myself.
Consider the probability and almost impossible odds of these 3 occurences within 9 months.
MH370
March 7, 2014 239 pax & crew
MH17
July 17, 2014 283 pax & crew killed
QZ8501
December 28, 2014 155 pax & crew killed
Further consider,
All Malaysian. AirAsia is owned by a man very closely connected to Najib (his brother was best man at Tony’s wedding) both personally and professionally. MH17 of course, killed Najib’s relative. MH370 was part of the Sovereign Wealth Fund that Najib controlled.
It is an emourmously powerful sequence of tragedy sharing a common denominator.
Closing comments here. Please add your thoughts to the most recent post. Thank you!