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.
@Jeff Wise,
You said: “@CliffG, The ‘loiter’ scenario is the only one, as far as I know, that would allow MH370 to fly on autopilot without human intervention and crash close to the 7th arc, as the ATSB believes it must have. The major weakness of this scenario is that it requires the 18:40 BFO value to have accidentally matched that of a plane flying south. It also seems odd that a play would fly hell-for-leather, then stop and linger without communicating with anyone, then continue on a doomed flight to nowhere. People have come up with scenarios that fit this description but they are somewhat unlikely seeming in my estimation.”
I tend to agree with your assessment that the “loiter scenario” is unlikely. However, there is an autopiloted flight path that does not loiter, is southbound at 18:40 (and therefore does not require a specific descent rate then to match the BFOs), and still reaches the 7th Arc with sufficient fuel. In fact it is rather simple.
Start with a NW course at ~18:29 and a reduction then in speed to Holding LRC at FL360. A turn southward from the NW course to ~200 degrees (toward IGOGU) at ~18:39 UTC matches the BFOs then. After passing IGOGU, a FMT at ~18:54 UTC to ~183 degrees (toward BEDAX) allows a match to the satellite data thereafter with the autopilot holding a constant True Heading after passing BEDAX at ~18:58. So we have no altitude changes and three pilot-initiated turns. The first is the jog to the north of N571. The second is a course to IGOGU, and the third is a course to BEDAX. Note there are two route discontinuities (upon passing both IGOGU and BEDAX) in this scenario, at which points the FMC begins to hold True Heading. BEDAX may have been selected because it is the initial alignment point for a “BEDAX Two Charlie” standard arrival at WITT (Banda Aceh).
Thanks for this. And what’s the end point?
@DrBobbyUlrich
Thank you…but where does that flight path end up?
@Jeff: mid-2014
@Johan, Thank you!
@Tom Lindsay
I thought my comment might flush out a couple more pieces of debris lol. Like you say they always follow comments on here!
@Jeff
“Thanks for this. And what’s the end point?”
Just about anywhere you want it to be.
@Jeff Wise
If it is the case that mh370 was shot down like MH17, how does this fit with the evidence we do have?
Or is that not what you are saying? Are you more suggesting it was Russian agents who took the plane?
@Jeff – Think you are missing an understanding of the definition of culpability in a military sense.
Military authority (and therefore justice) is always firmly based on the ‘chain of command’ – it is therefore less about motive or wether MH17 was shot down in error and by what ranking officer. The fact that someone within the Russian military command (indeed, even up to Vladimir Putin) put the BUK with the intent to use it within the theatre of war that makes them ultimately responsible under the chain of command.
‘Motive’ is completely therefore irrelevant – responsibility is – and especially within the structure of command that put the BUK in that situation.
Still not quite sure how you can link MH17 to MH370 in that sense….?
@DrBobbyUlich: ” a reduction then in speed to Holding LRC”
Do you mean Holding speed, not LRC speed?
@Crobbie, Yes, if the plane was not taken by Zaharie, then the only possible alternative I see is Russia.
@Jeff
Dutch animation document – year ago…
https://youtu.be/txMPruTmfxE?t=999
@Gysbreght,
I meant Holding, Flaps Up, All Engines (not Long Range Cruise).
@Jeff Wise,
The True Heading terminus is 34.0S.
You previously said: “You still wind up with a ghost flight scenario, which has essentially been ruled out.”
In addition to the fact that the 120,000 sq. km area search is not quite completed, there are autopiloted routes consistent with the satellite data which end outside the current search area (CSA). At least four candidates have been proposed (three by me and one by Victor and Richard). Let me address here the pro’s and con’s of each one.
1. Great Circle at Constant TAS
Way back in 2014, I originally fit a constant-true-air-speed “straight” route (a Great Circle) that ended SW of the CSA near 39S. This route has small BTO errors, but the BFO errors are just outside the Inmarsat limits (but still well within the DTSG distribution). There are two other issues. First, when the effect of elevated temperatures on fuel flow is included in the fuel model, the fuel is inadequate. Second, there does not seem to be any autopilot mode that allows a constant TAS. You can set a constant IAS, but the corresponding TAS is now temperature dependent, and the fit is degraded. So I no longer consider this high-speed, Great Circle route as a viable possibility.
2. True Heading at Holding
On September 1, I proposed a candidate True Heading route ending at 34.0 S. The only issue for this route I am aware of is the accuracy of modeling the wind effects (both tailwinds and crosswinds). That initial fit used an average of the wind vectors at the ends of each leg. In addition, it used just the 21:00 UTC wind data for the entire post-FMT route. I have already modified my flight path model so it integrates the average wind at numerous points (6) along each leg. This results in improved accuracy but noticeable changes occur in the calculated average winds for the last two legs (21:41 to 22:41 and 22:41 to 00:11) compared to my initial 2-point wind model. These changes degrade the fitting residuals somewhat.
The difficulty of predicting a constant heading flight path is that the wind varies in four dimensions (latitude, longitude, altitude, and time) along the route, and this must be closely approximated in the fitting routine, at least within the accuracy of the available wind data. This is particularly difficult for post-FMT MH370 because (a) the wind shifts ~180 degrees, (b) the wind is generally perpendicular to the flight path, and (c) the maximum wind speed exceeds 50 knots. My goal is to increase the fidelity of my wind model in 4-D and see if a True Heading route can (continue to) fit the post-FMT satellite data within the uncertainty of the GDAS wind data. I will report on those results when that work is completed.
3. Magnetic Track at Holding LRC
On August 12, 2016 I proposed a candidate Magnetic Track route ending at 34.1S. There are several potential issues with this route. First, it does not appear likely that this kind of lateral navigation method is used by the FMC after a route discontinuity. Thus, while it is technically possible to be manually selected using the Mode Control Panel, Magnetic Track seems less likely than other modes such as True Heading (after a route discontinuity). Second, this curved route requires a reduced average airspeed (i.e., Holding), and as a result there is excess fuel (a PDA of 5.8%) for a simple route. The fuel discrepancy is resolved if either (a) the APU were running from ~17:30 onward, giving a PDA of 2.8%, or (b) a descent to FL100 occurred between 18:30 and 18:46 followed by an ascent, giving a PDA of 4.0%. Third, this Magnetic Track route (which BTW happens to pass quite near Kate Tee) passes close to BULVA, not BEDAX. It is not apparent to me why a pilot would select BULVA as a waypoint. In summary, for this Magnetic Track route to be correct, several improbable events must occur.
In the case of the MH370 flight path after the FMT, both Magnetic Track and True Heading routes curve eastward approximately the same amount, so it does not surprise me that a Magnetic Track route also happens to match the sparse satellite data set if it were in fact produced by a True Heading route.
4. Great Circle at Constant Mach
On August 25th, Iannello and Godfrey proposed a Great Circle route to NZPG ending at 26.9S. It has BFO errors (up to 11.75 Hz) that exceed Inmarsat’s limits. It also requires a racetrack loiter and a 2900 fpm rate of descent during the 18:40 phone call.
I think the True Heading route has the most promise of the four current candidates for the following reasons:
a. It has a plausible sequence of events and waypoints leading to the post-FMT route.
b. It does not require a descent timed to the 18:40 phone call.
c. It does not require a racetrack loiter.
d. It has BFO errors within Inmarsat’s limits.
e. It has adequate fuel, even including the APU operating from ~17:30 to the end of flight.
Edit my comment #3 above to be: “Magnetic Track at Holding Speed”
@DrB
By Inmarsat BFO limits do you mean +/- 7 Hz (whatever that value means)? If you do, than please articulate how you interpret it and why. Why would you (implicitly) reject the DSTG calculated RMS value of +/- 5.5 Hz?
It is also true that the DSTG has applied Gaussian statistics to an intrinsically non-ergodic process. Are you OK with this approach?
The reason I am asking these questions is that it is very important to understand the limitations of the Inmarsat data. Any model that relies on this data has to account for the DSTG observables if it is to be taken seriously.
@all
BTW, I really do not expect a response from DrB. There really is no sensible response.
Ok,so maybe nobody else noticed the ‘Elephant in the room’. What POSSIBLE reason would anyone high in the Russian chain of command have for purposefully shooting down #1. A Civilian Passenge Plane? #2….from ‘Malaysia’of all places.
@Robert:
Turn it around: how could anyone high in the Russian line of command be believed to have shot down an airliner with that weapon by mistake?
@Robert
I agree with you; also no one has admitted responsibility for this tragedy. I am also concerned with the call from Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop, that those responsible are brought to justice via some sort of war crimes tribunal. More useful and practical (maybe) would be some method to reinforce the responsibility that MAS and other airlines should take in routing their planes over safe areas (not war zones) through some sort of penalty. Perhaps some compensation is possible for the NOK from the airline because of its route choice? Hopefully a lesson will be learned by Eurocontrol, ATCs everywhere and airlines.
Not that I condone this act in any way but it was probably fired in error by some inexperienced operator who has probably already paid the price.
There is an interesting article here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-05/lockerbie-no-model-for-the-effective-prosecution-of-mh17/7904644
If a deal to hijack the cargo from mh370 was not successful for RussianLike interests I would think mh17 could have been the revenge.
Jeff,
“if the plane was not taken by Zaharie, then the only possible alternative I see is Russia.”
Are you in trolling mode? You must be already shameful with regards to your recent publication against Zaharie, echoed by the media worldwide. Yes, Putin is a troublemaker to the whole world, but there is no apparent connection between him, MH17 and MH370. So, why do you still want to hang either Z. or P.? While I appreciate you running this blog, instead of focusing on the issues, which can be clarified, like you did before, recently you produce a lot of noise and unfair accusations.
You may disagree, but the only obvious thing is that nothing is obvious in the case of MH370.
@Robert:
I might still think it is more likely a warlord or local potentat or Siberian oil baron did it, but the responsibility for the whereabouts of that weapons platform has to land somewhere, doesn’t it? As someone mentioned, it is all about responsibility, and when you push that buttton among military, things will happen. Or not, but then we will know anyway.
What concerns mh370 I am sure Jeff will enlighten us in the next episode.
Bobby,
Re: “this Magnetic Track route (which BTW happens to pass quite near Kate Tee)”
I made the same observation with regard to the hypothetical magnetic HDG Hold more than two years ago at Duncan’s blog.
@DennisW,
I will respond to your (sometimes excellent) questions if you will stop personally attacking me. There is no need or benefit to anyone. It would also be a good idea for you to actually read my response BEFORE deciding on its sensibility. Fortunately, most contributors to this blog are more open-minded, and to them I give the following response.
Inmarsat made it clear in their paper that they expected all the BFO residuals/errors to be within +/- 7 Hz for the MH370 flight. I interpret this as an expectation for a single flight based on their analysis of previous flights. It is possible they also believe this 7 Hz upper bound on the error magnitude is valid for all 9M-MRO flights, although I don’t recall them explicitly saying that. There are at least two reasons why they might think so. First, a frequency offset in the SDU is automatically adjusted occasionally (but not more often than once every 24 hours) to compensate for slow oscillator drift/aging. In fact, this kind of adjustment was made while 9M-MRO was at the gate at 16:00 UTC. Second, if the bias term is adjusted in their modeling so that the gate BFO errors have zero mean value, the drift is largely (but not completely) compensated.
Regarding the automatic frequency adjustment, see Appendix 7 in my Addendum 5 which says :
“Note in addition that all BFOs dropped by 16 Hz after 16:00:27 due to automatic calibration of the Oven-Controlled Crystal Oscillator (private communication of ATSB information from Michael Exner). I have adjusted all BFOs prior to that time by subtracting 16 Hz, so all the CBFOs in this paper are on the “post OXCO automatic calibration” scale. There was no automatic frequency calibration at the subsequent power-ups later in this flight.”
This 16 Hz frequency adjustment implies several things. First, the mere fact that drift must be at least occasionally corrected means that it is not negligible. Second, the remainder of the flight took about 8 hours, so any slow drift/aging relevant to the MH370 route is limited to whatever would occur in only ~8 hours after 16:00. One would not expect this 8-hour drift/aging to be very large. Third, the amount of the adjustment (16 Hz) provides one sample of the frequency drift between corrections (which are more than a day apart, and are only done when needed). With just one sample, we don’t know whether this 16 Hz adjustment is typical or larger or smaller than typical.
The DSTG report shows larger BFO errors when they analyzed an ensemble of 20 previous flights. It is difficult to interpret this result in detail without having access to the measured and calculated BFOs that were used. You said: “Why would you (implicitly) reject the DSTG calculated RMS value of +/- 5.5 Hz?” First of all, as you well know, the RMS is just a single (positively-signed) parameter. So I interpret your question as why the DSTG got a RMS of 5.5 Hz when Inmarsat’s equivalent statistic is much smaller (~3 Hz). I also note that the DSTG got RMS values of 4.0 to 4.3 Hz when some outliers were excluded, so the “inconsistency” of the two analyses is perhaps not all that large (from ~3 Hz to ~4 Hz). The second part of your question (“It is also true that the DSTG has applied Gaussian statistics to an intrinsically non-ergodic process. Are you OK with this approach?”) is also relevant.
Let me make a few comments about BFO “errors”. First, there is a random read-noise component that has about a 1-2 Hz standard deviation. Second, there is a “structured” component of a similar magnitude that is caused by limited precision in the calculation of the frequency-compensation term. This component creates “sawteeth” in some in-flight sequences of BFOs. Third, there is undoubtedly a slow drift/aging component, but we don’t have enough information to estimate its typical slope. Fourth, thermal effects do occur that affect the measured BFOs. In particular, the satellite going into eclipse causes ~10 Hz frequency changes. This has been coarsely compensated for MH370. Could some of the extreme points in the DSTG BFO plot (such as those shown in Figure 5.4) be caused by (uncorrected) satellite eclipses on previous days? Fifth, it is possible that SDU temperature changes could affect the transmitted frequency despite oven thermal control, although at present we simply don’t know if this is a significant effect for MH370. Sixth, small frequency bias differences exist from channel to channel in the SDU, and these differences cannot all be calibrated with data taken at the gate.
I agree that the BFO errors appear non-ergodic, so applying gaussian statistics to an ensemble of flights can overestimate the short-term (single flight) error statistics. You also said ”Any model that relies on this data has to account for the DSTG observables if it is to be taken seriously.” First, it is not a strict requirement that a model for one flight have error statistics that “match” (i.e., have the same RMS value as) the statistics shown by DSTG for an ensemble of flights. That depends on the details of how DSTG did the calculations (which they did not show) and particularly on whether or not on this particular flight the non-ergodicity (i.e., bias drift) happened to be significant. Second, in my conservative view, it should be be consistent with the more stringent single-flight error bounds derived by Inmarsat (which also include bias drift during a single flight). Unfortunately Inmarsat did not show multiple examples of BFO errors for previous flights, so we are left with an unresolved inconsistency in the error statistics of “that frequency thing”, as Dr. Neil Gordon called it.
A final and minor point is that the BFOs for the two phone calls will have a somewhat larger error because they depend on in-flight calibration of channel-to-channel frequency bias differences. In the case of MH370 this is done by matching the 23:14 phone call BFOs to an interpolation between the 22:41 and 00:11 BFO values. Section 7.2 in my Addendum 5 paper addresses this point, and I estimate the error bounds for these two phone call BFOs are increased from 7 Hz to ~8.6 Hz.
@Oleksandr,
Kate Tee’s observations are quite interesting, but they may suffer from unintentional post-event memory modifications as most eyewitness accounts do. I personally think she may have seen 9M-MRO but only at high altitude.
So far, despite many attempts, I have not found nor have I seen any constant Magnetic Heading route that is consistent with the Inmarsat and fuel data.
@PaulC (from the prior thread)
“I think what you are really trying to tell me is that we are ‘in the dark’. The numbers we have are not good enough to make any sort of calculation, not even a reasonableness check.”
If the question at hand is, “Was any unusual or suspicious amount of fuel loaded onto MH370 for a flight that was supposed to go to Beijing?” the answer is no, we’re not in the dark. Not even remotely. (Unless they’re lying, but then you’ve got an 00:19 final ping which also happens to perfectly coincide with the fuel onboard plus a few minutes of gliding/diving — so, again, we’re not in the dark at all when it comes to fuel on MH370.)
Fuel consumption in heavy jets decays according to a natural log equation. It’s not linear. Can you ballpark an average lb or kg/hr rate for an entire flight? Sure. But at any given moment for the flight, you will be wildly off.
That’s why you have tables. FF/eng at a given weight, mach #, thrust setting and altitude, with optimum altitudes highlighted in ascending order as the plane gets lighter. Every sim Boeing I ever designed started with those tables and worked backwards. I used the Breguet equation to then derive the other variables in range/endurance. Other guys, like Dr B and Victor, are geniuses with Excel so they make spreadsheets that account for the log e decay in consumption (which is built into the tables by definition) by interpolating at 1 minute intervals (or any smaller interval, depending on how fancy you want to get.)
I can’t really explain it any better, except to refer you to the numbers in my prior comment (which don’t materially contradict the FI data at all) and to reassure you that the fuel loaded aboard 9M-MRO that day was perfectly legit for Beijing at the ZFW shown in the FI. Also perfectly legit for a plane that most likely flamed out at 00:15:49.
Cool?
@Jeff Wise. “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”.
The investigation chairman at 16:47 in Joshua’s video said, metaphorically pointing the finger, “Ukraine had sufficient information to close the airspace prior to July 17th”.
You also write, “…if it is determined that the Russian leadership deliberately ordered the shoot-down of MH17…,”
Also, from the NYT article, “Who gave the order to bring the BUK-TELAR into Ukraine and who gave the order to shoot down flight MH17?”
According to the video there were “three other airliners in close proximity” when MH17 disappeared from radar. I doubt that with its limited-capability radar the Telar could have discriminated between them and hence select MH17 or that there were other suitable methods available.
Regarding MH370 and loitering. Apologizing in advance if this comment is not accurate with the facts presented in this blog. There’s been so many interpretations it’s hard to keep track of if you’re just visiting occasionally. But after the initial moves to leave the area could possibly the loitering be attributed to second thoughts. Or listening to see how much radio chatter was happening regarding the plane. And if it was possible to turn back and reconsider. The fact of 230 people on board. Or could there have been a communication or attempted communication from the cockpit to somebody else that helped move the needle, and made the decision to go ahead with it, And he continued on with the original planned flight path.
@Jeff
The one thing that is common to MH370 and MH17 is that there is no agreed motive for either.
We inhabit a world of ‘spin’. Awkward information is buried/hidden/classified and journalists are briefed to air approved narratives that meet the needs of TPTB. It was ever thus:
‘Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.’ – Samuel Johnson, The Idler, 1758.
In the case of MH17, we have not even been given the usual ATC transcripts; satellite data must exist (this was a war zone!) but has not been disclosed (by either side) – if it had suited TPTB we could have had the ‘truth’ immediately but both sides have chosen not to do that – what is their motive?
At a time of heightened geo-political tensions MH17 has become a geo-political football. It will continue to be used to manipulate public perception and all reports/claims etc. should be viewed in that light.
The fact we do not have any motive allows both sides to leak credulous information to suit their cause. ‘The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ is the last thing we will hear.
Why is JIT subject to a non-disclosure agreement of all the parties? Malaysia was initially not allowed to join JIT (it was involved in the technical investigation but was not a member of JIT) because it refused to sign and was only admitted to JIT in December 2014. Why the need for such opaqueness?
Two years on and we do not yet even have agreement, of all parties, on the facts. Not the interpretation of the facts but the actual facts themselves – the non-disclosure agreement is obviously intended to ensure that we never do get all the facts.
But even that is not crucial to understanding MH17. We will never know why MH17 happened until we also know what the current motive of all the parties involved is – but as Bill Clinton said at Yale, in 1998: “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
@Nederland
Previous thread.
Thanks for the link. TBH you would really only expect such matters to appear in the early days. It is now ‘old news’ but I still think you need to consider these points because those ‘rumours’ may throw some light on what happened – especially if any evidence has since emerged to support them.
@Matt Moriarty
“Cool?” – certainly reasonable! Thanks.
@Gysbreght @Ge Rijn
Previous thread.
Thanks both for your feed back.
@Jeff from previous post October 4, 2016 at 8:14 AM
” The ‘loiter’ scenario … It also seems odd that a play would fly hell-for-leather, then stop and linger without communicating with anyone”
No-one knows (entirely) what communications happened that night. The aircraft has UHF, VHF, HF and Sat communications – no single body / authority monitors ALL frequencies at ALL times. Why claim “anyone” to re-enforce your argument ?
It is simply “unknown”. Neither YOU nor I know – understood?
Little the Malaysian produce can be considered reliable.
@PaulC:
Avoiding a direct confrontation that would lead to war could be one good reason. Avoiding a situation where war-mongers are controlling the truth before investigations get done could be another. Sitting down in a boat may have its advantages at times.
On a related note…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/10/04/a-russian-company-is-selling-childrens-beds-modeled-after-the-missile-launcher-that-downed-mh17/
“Even in the most carefree times, a children’s bed fashioned after a missile launcher would probably raise eyebrows.
But a Russian furniture company has drawn ire for selling a bed frame resembling the Buk surface-to-air missile system that a Dutch-led inquiry has concluded shot down a passenger plane over Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board.”
“But the uproar over the Buk bed clearly had an effect. By Tuesday, the CaroBus website had changed the name of the bed from Buk to “Defender.”
A message on the site attributes the switch to “a number of requests for a more neutral name.”
“We draw your attention to the fact that this is a defensive weapon, not an offensive one,” the message reads. “It has been guarding the peace in the skies since 1980.”
Russia has rejected the Dutch-led investigation’s conclusion that the Buk missile launcher that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was taken from Russia into a part of eastern Ukraine held by Moscow-backed separatists. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has declined to apologize for the incident, saying the findings do not identify those suspected of firing the missile.”
(Abridged version, full text at link)
@BobC, @Gorto, Indeed, it’s possible to imagine a chain of events that would create a loiter. But given the aggressiveness of the initial turnaround, and the lack of subsequent communication with the authorities, none of them seem highly plausible to me. Your opinion may differ.
@Johan
“…a situation where war-mongers are controlling the truth before investigations get done…”
I think that is probably where we are – except I would say “controlling the narrative”. I see MH17 as 95% politics and 5% investigation. I am sure the ‘truth’ has been known since day 2 but it does not suit anyone to tell us what it is.
@joshua:
Thanks for the youtube-video. Valuable to have seen.
@Jeff
aggressiveness of the initial turnaround was huuuge, thats true; and its pushed all the time
@PaulC:
Well, a narrative that does not appear as the truth is not much of a narrative is it?
@Johan
I couldn’t agree less!
Control of the narrative is far more important than control of the facts. If you are a global warming denier (as I am) then you will already know what I mean – but let me give you a simplified example in another area – food.
Since the dawn of time, man has eaten: meat, dairy and eggs.
In the 1970s ‘research’ was published linking heart disease, particularly
to eggs and dairy – high cholesterol of the ‘wrong’ sort. The global MSM pushed it for all it was worth – the story sold papers and countless millions changed their eating habits.
Deniers were vilified.
“Don’t eat eggs or butter – there are lots of ‘healthy’ substitutes!”
Now we know that the research was all complete rubbish: there is nothing wrong with eating eggs and butter, they are not ‘bad’ for us. In the meantime Monsanto has made mega bucks from selling ‘cholesterol reducing’ products … for 40 years! It was put into everything! Guess who ‘sponsored’ a lot of the initial research?
Depending on your motive and how successful your lobbying is, facts can be buried in the face of alternative interests.
Nobody has an exact number but in the Middle Ages, hundreds of thousands of women were killed across Europe as ‘witches’. Was this the result of ‘fact’ or ‘narrative’?
@Jeff Wise @all
Remember the US-Navy shot down IranAir flight 655. No rebels involved only high educated professionals. In the tensions of that conflict wrong top-down decisions were made. 290 people died. Only 8 less than MH17.
This shows IMO there’s no need for only some uneducated rebels involved.
There was no real motive to shoot down flight 655 too other then following rigid protocols under tension and pressure of top-down ‘scenario fullfilment’.
There is a big difference with MH17 though. The U.S. never tried to cover up there involvement and the case went to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Excusses were made by the U.S. and 68 million dollar paid to the familys 8 years after the incident. It took till 2000 the U.S. military officialy admitted they had made mistakes. All details about the incident never were disclossed.
So nothing new in this regard.
To me it’s obvious the Russian military is involved on a high level in the Oekrain war.
They deny this from day one the conflict started. Admitting they sent/delivered the BUK-installation would prove their direct involvement on a high level. Even Putin must have given permission I believe.
IMO this is what the Russians try to cover up at all costs.
I believe the shoot down of MH17 could have been a tragic mistake like the shooting of flight 655. But to admit direct involvement in an internal conflict on this level and with such consequenses is far more reaching politically than admitting you shot a passenger plane in a conflict you are officially known to be involved in.
I think this is the Russian (and Putins) biggest problem now with MH17.
I don’t believe MH370 has anything to do with this at all.
@Ge Rijn
Good post but a couple of thoughts.
In your scenario, it would not just require a mistake to launch a BUK, you also need a mistake for a BUK to be there in the first place. Even if Russia was involved why send a BUK into E Ukraine when a MANPAD was all that was needed?
And, if Russia did think it was useful to send in BUKs (for what?), how could it ever actually use them and still deny involvement?
@DrB
I have absolutely no idea why you think I have ever attacked you. I have disagreed with you, and perhaps you took that language as an attack – whatever attack means in your vernacular. I can assure you that it is never my intention to personally attack anyone as I clearly stated previously.
Getting back to your response (which I appreciate, BTW) you said:
“Regarding the automatic frequency adjustment, see Appendix 7 in my Addendum 5.”
I have no idea what document you are referring to.
Whether the oscillator offset is periodically zeroed is not at all relevant to the error statistics. The offset is easily removed in the analytics. It is the variation that is important, as you know. Likewise the sawtooth characteristic of all numerically controlled oscillator implementations is not at all troubling.
My reservations regarding your, mine, and all previous analytics using BTO and BFO data is that collectively we have no realistic model of the AES oscillator. I offer Figure 5.4 of the DSTG report as evidence to that statement. Inmarsat’s suggestion that there is a 7 Hz bound on the BFO uncertainty was incredibly casual. What does 7 Hz represent, one sigma, two sigma, three sigma,…? The reality is no one knows what Inmarsat intended with that statement. You are choosing to interpret it as a two sigma error when comparing it to the DSTG numbers. Figure 5.4 clearly shows that to be an incorrect assumption.
An ambiguity related to the DSTG data is how the statistics of Table 5.1 were computed. Are the reported standard deviations relative to the ensemble mean or to the means of the 20 individual flights? My attempt to carefully extract the values in figure 5.4 would suggest it is the latter, but I really have no way to be sure.
Furthermore we have no way to evaluate the relevance of the DSTG ensemble mean. Two flights with 10Hz and -10Hz mean BFO error would have an ensemble mean of zero error. The use of the term “mean” in this context is virtually useless. What is clear is that the DSTG essentially ignored the BFO data in their analytics. My guess is that there is a very good reason for that once you “look under the covers”.
The fact that you are apparently not troubled by BFO error uncertainty speaks volumes to me. Your lengthy reply does not address the problem I am raising. As I recall the “attack” which you perceived I made was exactly in regard to this issue – that is why construct an elaborate wind model when there are other uncharacterized uncertainties with much larger error?
This problem is not going to go away, Bobby. Nothing you have said in your recent reply alters the concern any reasonable person would have and should have. As it stands it renders all analytics which invoke small BFO error as a boundary condition suspect.
@PaulC:
If I corrected you there I might refute us both. 🙂
Seemingly valid observation on the Buk and “Russia’s” motive to Ge Rijn).
@PaulC
It seems the Oekrain rebels asked for a BUK-system the day before (tel.tab) and probably they asked for it earlier.
The Oekrain air force not only has SU 25 with max. 7km service ceiling but also MIG 29 and SU 27 with ~19km service ceiling.
Far out of reach without a BUK or similar system.
It’s quite clear the Russians delivered the BUK-system from their territory with high command Russian approval. Most probably with Russian military delivered with it to operate the system.
No serious military nation will hand over a system like this to a group of rebels without keeping complete control over the system and its operation.
To me it’s clear Russians operated that BUK-system and shot MH17 down. And not under the command of some rebel-general.
More probably on order of the Russian commander of that BUK unit.
I think probably something went wrong in the tenced circumstances. Maybe a high-shot commander was eager to shoot a missile and test the system on the first high flying plane they saw coming. Maybe they f”ked eachother up telling it was a MIG 29 or a SU 27 that possibly detected them.
Like the crew of USS Vincennes did when told flight 655 was probably a F14 attacking them.
Drawing the conclusion now this was a deliberate act on MH17 orchestrated by Putin and the Russian military is a step far too far IMO and not helpfull. It only contributes to further polarisation.
The US-government was also accused of deliberately taking down flight 655.
This was not the case as concluded by the International Court of Justice.
Putin and his government/military only try to cover up their direct involvement in the Oekrain civil war by denying their responsibility to what happened with MH17.
It’s ruthless politics.
And when they keep refusing to admitt their involvement and responsibility they will pay a far higher toll in the long run.
If Putin and his government/military just would say: ‘We are very very sorry, we f”ked up. We pay all your losses in our might’. Or something like that.
Anger will be tremendous and tears will flow but the honesty will be respected in the end with more positive outcomes than they can expect with their current attitude.
They create harsh enemies for a very long time if they stay on this road.
Sorry if it’s all a bit long and emotional but I’m Dutch and rather affected by this all.
And I like to add. Don’t throw more oil on the fire by relating MH370 to this drama. It only makes things worse IMO.
There’s not a shred of evidence to link MH370 to Russia.
@Ge Rijn
Good post, IMO.
@Ge Rijn
Firstly, I entirely agree with you that MH370 and MH17 are not related at all. I really don’t have a clue who did it, or why and I would be completely unsurprised to learn that it was the Russian, or Ukrainian forces.
Secondly, a BUK is not simple to operate and there is no way an untrained ‘rebel’ (or ‘liberation fighter’, as some might argue) could have used it – in my opinion it was fired either by either the Russian or the Ukrainian military (the Ukrainians have plenty of BUKs of their own).
Thirdly, the ‘rebels’ (if that is what they are) are ground bound, they do not have any aircraft, so it is not immediately clear to me how useful a MIG 29 or an SU 27 would be – the SU 25 was designed to provide air support for ground forces and has obvious applications far more relevant to fighting ground bound ‘rebels’. I believe you are right about the operational ceiling of 7,000m but that is because it is not pressurised, it can operate at much greater height if the pilot has a pressurised oxygen supply – but that is probably irrelevant, as there would be no rebels to fight at altitude.
Lastly, highly portable, relatively light weight, easy to use MANPADS, would certainly be good for up to 4,500m – that is surely enough to make life very difficult for the Ukrainian air force?
I still do not see how: ‘let’s send the rebels some BUKs’, could ever have been seen as a good idea in Russia and I just do not understand the thinking that says, Russia supplied BUKs to the ‘rebels’ and expected to be able to deny involvement.
How many BUKs would the Russians expect to be able to use, before someone started asking questions? Given that other powers have satellites constantly covering the area, I think the answer to that question is zero.
@All
Slightly off topic I know, but the world is in peril, great peril. Reagan (possibly one of the greatest US Presidents of all time) achieved the herculean task of setting in train the breakup of the Soviet Union, and consequently, almost at a stroke, ended the cold war. Obama has allowed Putin to run riot, undoing all that was achieved by Reagan, just by being perceived as weak on foreign policy. Putin is making a laughing stock of the US. Going forward, the World is a much more dangerous place. MH17 is just one sad consequence of this changed world situation. End of rant.
BTW Z did it, and there was no loiter. There is just a chance MH370 will be found within the current search area, providing the ATSB concentrate on the SW corner. It is clear from the wreckage recovered to date, that the pilot was attempting to ditch along the swell, in a crosswind blowing from left to right. To counter the assymetrical lift caused by the crosswind, the pilot had to command right wing up, deflecting the RH flaperon down into the water in the process. When the RH flaperon broke off, the RH wing dipped into the water, breaking off the RH outboard flap. Flaps had been partially deployed prior to ditching, on order to reduce the angle of attack. Nothing has been found from the LH wing, or from the RH inboard flap. Sounds plausible? Just my take on the situation.