As readers of this blog or my Kindle Single (or, now, New York magazine) know, I’m intrigued by the possibility that MH370 might have been hijacked and flown north to the Yubileyniy Aerodrome within the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If so, it would have come to rest on the specially-milled concrete at approximately an hour and a half before sunrise on Sunday, March 8. And then what? If it stayed where it was, it would have been easy to spot by land-imaging satellites overhead. To avoid detection, it would have to have either refueled and taken off again, or found some kind of shelter.
As it happens, the Kazakh steppe is a terrible place to hide a 210-foot long, 60-foot-high airplane. The flat, desert plain is sparsely populated and almost featureless, so that anything large and unusual is apt to stand out. There is no natural canopy of trees to shelter under. Though there are large buildings at the cosmodrome where space vehicles are serviced, there are no large structures near Yubileyniy.
After I began developing my “Spoof” hypthesis I spent days scouring first Google Earth, then free commercial satellite imagery looking for any hint that a plane could have been stashed in the vicinity. The pickings were slim. The Yubileyniy complex was built in the ‘80s as the landing site for the Buran space plane, and after the program was cancelled in 1989 it has largely sat disused. Occasionally the runway is used by planes carrying inbound VIPs and cosmonauts, but otherwise nothing has really happened there in decades. An overview of the area is depicted above.
The dark, fishhook-shaped line is the rail line connecting the airstrip to the rest of the Baikonur complex. Alongside it is a road from which a series of driveways lead off to the north. One of them leads to an isolated six-story building that stands surrounded by debris, berms, and trenches. I came to think of the area as Yubileyniy North. Here’s what it looked like in 2006 (click on images to enlarge):
As you can see, the area is desert, where vehicle tracks persist for many years. The six-story building casts a dark, short shadow to the northwest — the sun is nearly overhead. The road from the airstrip comes up from the bottom of the frame and curves to the right. Here and there rectangular patches of debris suggest where buildings once stood. Essentially, it’s a ruin. Here’s the same area, six years later:
Not much has changed. The sun is lower in the sky, so the six-story building’s shadow is longer. But nothing seems to have changed at all. The entire area of Yubileyniy is like this—the place seems have been left to slowly crumble in the desert sun for decades. There’s nowhere to stash a 777. On the other hand, the most recent imagery viewable here in Google Earth comes from 2012. Perhaps something has happened since then? I didn’t know anything about what kind of imagery is available from commercial sources, but I set out to learn. Before long I came upon a company called Terraserver, which lets you view high-resolution satellite imagery for free. I used it to scope around the general area of the Yubileyniy complex, and here’s what I found in an image of Yubileyniy North from October 31, 2013:
Suddenly, things are happening. A number of trucks are lined up in the parking lot in the upper-right part of the image. The six-story building is being disassembled. And what looks like a large rectangle of dirt has been bulldozed to the left of the building. The image resolution is so good that you can make out what I take to be the stripes left by the bulldozer blade as it worked back and forth horizontally. At the northern end of the rectangle is a berm which casts a shadow to the north. At the far northeastern corner lies what appears to be a trench with a well-defined corner on the upper right, with treadmarks leading out of it toward the southeast. I’m not sure what this dirt rectangle represents — are they building a pile of dirt, or a hole? — but what really gets my attention is the size of the thing. To give you a sense of scale, I’ve superimposed an equivalently proportioned 777 silhouette onto the image:
This struck me as interesting, to say the least. Naturally, I wondered what happened next. Fortunately, Terraserver had one more image that I could browse for free. This next one was taken on April 26, 2014:
Holy cow. All traces of both the building and the dirt rectangle have been erased. Various debris piles have been swept away, too. At first I thought that maybe the image had been digitally scrubbed, but if you look closely you can easily make out individual pieces of junk in between the cleared areas. So my interpretation is that the site was actually cleared and swept up.
So here’s the situation: nothing happens at Yubileyniy for decades; then, four months before MH370 disappears, the Russians start building a 777-sized something-or-other a mile and a half from a giant disused airstrip. Then, a month after the plane disappears, the area looks like it’s been erased.
What had happened in the meantime? To find out, I had to shell out cash from my own pocket to buy imagery from the main commercial satellite imagery provider, Digital Globe, via one of its resellers—in this case, a company called Apollo Mapping. The cash drain was painful, but at this point I was very far down the rabbit hole. Here’s what Yubileyniy North looked like on December 17, 2013:
The sun is low on the snow-dusted steppe; it’s almost winter. In a month and a half, workers have removed all but the bottom-most floors of the six-story building. You can make out the shadow of a crane projecting to the north from the middle of the remaining structure. A handful of trucks can still be seen in the parking lot. The dirt pile has been extended a few yards to the north; the berm at that end now overlies the what we saw as the sharp corner of the trench in the October image. Beyond the berm lies either a dark strip that could either be a long trench or just a shadow; to my eye the line of brightness at its northern edge implies the lip of a trench, but who knows. Work is clearly continuing. The next image, in black and white, is from three weeks later, January 9, 2014:
Now winter is in full effect. Snow blankets the entire region, and cold has descended: in the four days before this picture was taken, the temperature fluctuated between -15F and +14F. The disruption of the snow cover shows that work is very much underway. The building seems to be down to its last story. Trucks can be seen in the parking lot. I’m not sure what to make of the northern end of the rectangle; two dark strips are visible, perhaps one of them is a trench and the other is the shadow of a berm. Unforunately the resolution is not very good because the image was taken at a fairly low angle. The fact that work is continuing under such harsh conditions suggests a sense of urgency, to my mind; or perhaps these are simply hardy mofos. By the time the next image is taken, nearly two months have passed.
In this black-and-white image, the building has been completely dismantled and the dirt rectangle bulldozed flat. No berm remains at the northern end. Horizontal bulldozer tracks are still visible. The dark dirt is framed with a lighter border, suggesting perhaps a snowy slope. No trucks are visible, suggesting that the work crew has moved on. A color image taken four days later looks almost identical:
This image was taken two days before MH370 disappeared, on March 6. The next one was taken eight days after, on March 16:
When I first saw this picture, my heart leapt. The two scenes, taken just before and after the disappearance, looked so different that I was certain that something significant had occurred in the interim. Perhaps what was a rectangular depression in the March 6 image has now been filled in with sand (along with maybe, oh, who knows, a plane?).
I began pricing out tickets to Kazakhstan and searching the internet for advice on detecting large buried things with metal detectors. I located a Russian from St. Petersburg who’d made a gonzo two-day bike trek across the steppe to reach the Yubileyniy strip and sought his advice on how to get to the area without permission; he told me that he’d camped out at the airstrip overnight without anybody noticing him but then had tried to visit a busier part of the cosmodrome and gotten arrested. After he told them he was just scouting around because he was a huge fan of the Buran project, they let him go. I figured that if I was more careful I had a good chance of making it in and back.
But then I looked more closely, and examined the weather records. It just so happened that during this time interval spring fell on Baikonur like a hammer. On March 6, the temperature had only just peeked above freezing, by the 16th the daily highs had been in the 40s for the better part of a week. The thaw has completely changed the color palette. Everything that was covered in snow, and hence lighter colored, is now sodden and hence darker colored. White plains of snow are now damp brown sand. The darker earth of the rectangle is now drier and lighter-colored. After staring at these images for many hours I concluded that the most likely interpretation is that nothing has changed except for a temperature change.
And so we wind up back at our April 26 image:
By now the desert has returned to its normal dried-out state. The cluttered jumble seen over the winter has been replaced by almost featureless swatches of tan. A vehicle track overlies the northernmost part of the dirt rectangle, its borders now smudged and indeterminate.
I showed some of these images to construction experts and satellite imagery professionals, and received very little encouragement. Most likely, they told me, the work being performed was site remediation: a building was torn down, and construction debris thrown in a trench and covered up. As successive trenches are dug and filled in, a rectangular shape is formed. Simple as that.
And yet: the entire cosmodrome is littered with decades of abandoned equipment and derelict buildings, evincing a constitutional lack of interest in the concept of remediation. There is no commercial or residential activity for miles of Yubileyniy. Why, after decades, did the Russians suddenly need to clear this one lonely spot, in the heart of a frigid winter, finishing just before MH370 disappeared? And why is it that the greater part of the dirt rectangle was already laid out in the Oct 31 image, before the building was substantially demolished?
I don’t know. I tried to reach out to people who might know, but had no luck, and eventually I had to turn my attention to projects that might earn me some money. But I’d love to find out. If any readers have any special insight, I’d love to hear it.
UPDATE 4/3/2106: Since I wrote the above, Google Earth has added a new high-quality image of the site, taken October, 12, 2014. It gives a different impression from the last image–it doesn’t look any longer like the dirt was swept flat, like someone trying to cover their tracks.
@littlefoot
If GerryS is right, spoofing INMARSAT data might have been quite familiar to russian scientists, who definitely are well educated and have superior price winning mathematicians. All scientists i spoke to were capable and well trained.
So it s no surprise to me that they might have experimented with BFO since years. Remember that reference values of the Investigation report? There was one flight to Europe and the BFO/BTO values fit very well until the plane got into russian airspace. Maybe forging BFOs is already in practice somehow. But nevertheless if they eperimented with spoofing BFO data, there must be traces of those spoofs in the data flows of INMARSAT which are stored by GHCQ and NSA.
@nihonmama
its quite an irony that those “backdoor” people might have fallen victim to an electronic attack.
I remember a discussion on DS once about the Gate, where the boarding was. There was an issue about identifying the right position of the A/C on the tarmac in KL, because the plane wasnt served at the scheduled gate. Maybe this gate change had something to do with with the jamming of pax phones.
As was said on DS once, for this unhappy flight everything seemed to have gone wrong from before the start.
BTW at least half of the redditors think that this is an important issue, if confirmed.
Well whatever the Russians are, or were, up to a Yubileyniy Aerodrome is of interest. If they were running heavy equipment in frozen ground at those kinds of temperatures they had to be determined! Heavy iron equipment when it get’s cold tends to get brittle and you end up breaking things. Not to mention wear and tear on the mechanical end of things. I ask the question, “Why would you go at something beating up your equipment at an abandoned site?”
I also choose to remain on the fringe that says MH370 hit the dirt somewhere.
Hypothetical Conspiracy Theory: Russia steals the plane to repurpose it as a terrorist weapon. The manufacture some sort of crude nuke that could be easily attributed some terrorist organisation. Send it to some western target. The west responds in force and is drawn into a wider middle eastern conflict. With western attention elsewhere and resources committed, Putin’s Russia has an easier time “expanding it’s influence.”
PAX fons
@JS
for me it looks a bit like malaysian security measures. a defensive thing. precautions against attacks. pilots tell me, that there is always a big issue for police forces, when extra valuable freight is shipped.
On the other hand, we have to take into account, that ranking malaysian persons were deeply involved in the disappearance, who could make sure, that they bought time with the misleading of Vietnam ATC and could also influence decisions about scrambling the jets, and later on mislead the search into the SCS, followed by very crude and unreliable radar data.
@littlefoot
i forgot to mention how INMARSAT could find the traces of the spoof tests: look for unexplained AES logons in the flights of the last 3 years 🙂
I am dead sure, those russian guys are very smart, they must have tested it!”
@JS:
“How do we really know there were no calls and no texts?”
Let me add two words: “IF TRUE”
Your questions are right on.
And consider this:
We have THREE PHONES stories related to MH370:
1. DailyMail (3.22.14) — The call that was allegedly made to Capt Shah, SHORTLY BEFORE TAKEOFF, from a phone that was purchased “recently” by an unidentified person who gave a woman’s name. The SIM card in the phone was registered to a non-existent ID (MYKAD card).
2. NST (4.12) and TheLeadCNN (4.14) — The call that allegedly connected to a cell-tower in Penang, Malaysia — from the co-pilot’s cell phone.
[NOTE: from a 2001 NYT article (AFTER THE ATTACKS: COMMUNICATIONS; New Perspective on the Issue Of Cell Phone Use in Planes)
“fact…is that cell phones can work in almost all phases of a commercial flight”.
But Brock tweeted (12.29.14): “On #CNN Apr.14: US Officials CONFIRM #MH370 copilot cellphone connect; but primary radar track says 35,000′ altitude = NO BARS. Which is it?” And he also said to me in that convo: if the cell phone was “newer”, the connect would have been impossible.]
3. 2.28 Guardian(‘Nobody cares any more’) – P.I. Ethan Hunt:
“But on MH370: nobody. Not one.”
“Wait,” I say. “Are you saying that after the plane doors closed, nobody sent a single message?”
“Before the doors closed!” Ethan says.
“Really?” I say.
“Not one message from anybody on that aircraft!” Ethan looks delighted by my astonishment. “I’ve told the PI to look at this. At Kuala Lumpur I saw how easy it would be for someone to get on to a plane and put mobile phone blockers on there.”
If NO messages were sent from any pax or crew phone on MH370 before it took off AND IF #1 and/or #2 are true, something isn’t right.
@CosmicAcademy:
“There was an issue about identifying the right position of the A/C on the tarmac in KL, because the plane wasnt served at the scheduled gate. Maybe this gate change had something to do with with the jamming of pax phones.”
THANK YOU for bringing this up. It never sat right with me.
“Per .@Airlandseaman transcript shows #MH370 @ C1. So why does ADS-B v @flightradar24 show it at a different gate?”
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/469933245505630209
Reading some of the posts, I’m having disquieting thoughts.
Can we be sure the pilots were Shah and Hamid? Did they and the passengers really board MH370? What happened on the ground?
@CosmicAcademy, @JS:
Sorry, I posted before adding this thought:
The other possibility is that the news stories about the call to Capt. Shah and the co-pilot’s cell phone connecting to the Penang tower were never true — because they were PLANTED.
If you doubt that stories are planted in the media – all the time — please recall:
Nihonmama
Posted December 15, 2014 at 1:56 PM
Up Close: Inside an IG Southern Route
“But since we’re firmly in the realm of PR, I will share a fragment of what friends (principals in three global PR firms) told me last night. We were talking about Ketchum, which is no longer the agency of record for MAS. Most in the business could never understand the engagement to begin with, since Ketchum’s bailiwick is PR and consumer goods firm, not crisis management. MAS new agency is PPC, in the UK.
They also said that the narrative spin that’s occurring around the disappearance of MH370 is nothing short of amazing — and to pay attention to the stories that have been planted (and paid for) by various PR agencies, in support the current search.”
[NOTE: while I got this information from friends who work in the PR business — and I have several who do — I do not now, nor have I ever worked in PR or for anyone who does].
Hishammuddin Hussein refuted the co-pilot cell phone story in the same day NST published it (04.12.12)
Remember what Hunt said (If true) —
“But on MH370: nobody. NOT ONE”
JS – I know I don’t personally text anyone at 1.00am but that’s speaking for myself.
The Malaysians are now the beneficiaries of their own ineptitude as we have very little way of knowing what is factual from that period.
The plane performed a number of turns, there was nothing super duper tricky involved, and the co-pilot is fully qualified to take control of things. He just had very few hours in a 777 that’s all – but plenty in a simulator.
Gene – Israel has always been the fly in the ointment for Russia. In the heart of a region they have a lot of influence there is this pro US state with nukes. And now oil and gas off Haifa – lots of it. They sponsored the Arab-Israeli wars specifically to get rid of Israel. Compounding their annoyance is the fact that they actually voted for the creation of an Israeli state in 1948 assuming it would collapse and fall their way, while the UK abstained. Now the Russians are cosy with Iran who are hell bent on destroying Israel(it’s their actual foreign policy) and sponsor any old terrorist group across the Sunni-Shia divide to achieve it. Here is where Vlad could get pragmatic. For Iran getting into Israeli airspace is the key – mess that bit up and you are history. What about a faked aircraft ID?
@Nihonmama
I have not been able to confirm Hunt’s story about the cell phones from any other source. Has anyone else been able to do so?
As far as the Penang overflight is concerned why not? A low altitude and low air speed would segway well with a Xmas Island continuation.
Matty, I thought about the late hour texts. It would certainly cut down the number of Facebook “we’re going to DisneyWorld” posts. There should still be some, I think. Odd that we’d hear rumors about the copilot’ phone connecting but no others.
Was it MH17 or QZ8501 that we saw pics from inside the plane? Do we have ANY pics from inside a Malaysian 777 in the recent years?
JS – it points back to Christine Negroni’s comments about the investigation being so shambolic. It seem to be annoying everyone except the people it should be annoying. Noone cares about this? It’s as if it doesn’t matter what the Malaysians do.
@ Matty
I am with you on the Iranian connection. For Russia it is always about a warm water port. If you take out the weight of the passengers and bags, I think you can make the desert below Dalgan. Paint the plane with El Al colors and put a nuke or 2 in it and fly it to Tel Aviv.
@DennisW:
“I have not been able to confirm Hunt’s story about the cell phones from any other source.”
The bigger point, IMO is that we should be looking at ALL THREE of these stories again.
If what Hunt says is true, the BEST way to confirm that would be to find out what PI firm is working for the families and talk to them. I’m not going to say that’s impossible (it’s not). But with all the BS going on around this missing airplane, there are great reasons to make that PI team hard to find.
Rob Tanner –
As someone else noted there is fat chance of that 19 y/o Iranian really being 19. The Israeli’s were aghast at them being excluded so early but we have no idea what is really going on there. One thing for sure once the passenger list goes out all countries are free to do their own legwork and they will have. Stolen passports aren’t cheap and when a plane goes missing passengers get looked at so in the case of a hijack it would need to not look obvious.
CNN was going to air an MH370 special tonight. Instead, it has been preempted by a recap of Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, today. Even worse, BiBi still has his comb-over.
@Nate, I think they’re going to air it Thursday now. I’ll be on during the following hour, between 10pm and 11pm.
I worked for a company that did photogramatry and found that IR imagery could tell you more of a story about the mass in the picture. Trees would have a different color than the plain earth or fields or turf. You could see a green football field in a color photo, but in IR it was a different color than the real grass next to the stadium telling you that it was artificial turf. You could tell if it was a good camouflaged canopy or just earth with IR imagry. Shadows give it up too, but what if it was flush to the ground. Look up the camo they used in California during WWII. They were hiding factories. Technology today could see right through that, but that’s the extent they were willing to go through to hide something. Why not in this as well. I also believe that this plane went north and landed. Look how fast they found the wreckage from the AirAsia plane that went down in December. Things and people float when planes go down in the water.
@Jeff and all
I have been following this for a long time but never spoke up. I have very little experience in aviation or satellite technology but can grasp the basics in which is discussed in this forum- my college studies involved cartography and GIS. Unlike others, i do not question motive at all for the Northern arc theory – my question is where did it go after landing at Jubilee? Assuming your hypothesis is real (which everyone assumes is a small chance) where would the aircraft have gone afterwards?
It is all very fascinating and your kindle read was pretty awesome – I had my wife read it to make sure I wasn’t crazy.
Keep up the good work and I am sure events in the near future will tell us more (and I doubt that will be any sort of debris)
1. Recall that Interpol statement that there were additional “suspect passports” being investigated, names and other info has not been released as far as I know.
2. Also:South China Morning Post reported that Taiwan’s spy chief had received warning of “planned attacks on Beijing airport and the city’s subway system” on March 4 [2014]. “Security chiefs were believed to have received the alert from China Airlines, following a phone call to the company earlier in the day, from a man speaking in French who claimed he wanted to warn of possible terrorist activity.”
SCMP also said China Airlines had also circulated an unrelated ‘Aviation Security Notice’ to all staff, warning of a “significant risk of terrorist attacks and military actions against aviation”. The spokesman said that security alerts are not automatically issued during high-profile events such as the ongoing National People’s Congress meetings in Beijing.
I’ve got something to add in relation to the possible accessing of MH370’s e/e bay. I was one of the posters on Duncan’s site back in August when this was first discussed and I suggested then that Boeing needed to take urgent steps to ensure that the bay was more secure. Somebody came back with a brief response asserting that Boeing had modified the e/e bay hatch so that it was secured with special screws that could only be removed by a special screwdriver. There was no further discussion of this possible modification. If Boeing did indeed do this (and I haven’t checked) it would have made access to MH370’s e/e bay harder: if, of course, Malaysian Airlines had modified their fleet accordingly. We don’t, of course, know if any potential hijackers had such a tool or if they took MH370 via this ‘route’. But if they did – and MH370 had been modified – it would have slowed them down, making access more difficult (and potentially more visible). Does anybody else know anything about this?
@N’mama
“The bigger point, IMO is that we should be looking at ALL THREE of these stories again.”
Please, take the lead: interrogate the narrative & bring back some facts. Something more than 140 chars would be encouraging.
TEx
A possible reason why the six-story building at Yubileyniy Aerodrome was demolished after many years of standing unattended is it was radioactively contaminated.
They had to wait until the radiation levels were low enough to work safely. Then they demolished the building and buried the rubble in widely-separated trenches for long-term storage.
Any connection with MH370 would be pure coincidence.
@Martin B, You may well be right. Others have speculated that the six-story building looked more like a barracks or a school than a factory. I agree that the likeliest explanation for the timing is that it was a coincidence. Hopefully someday we’ll find the answer.
@Mark Fox, If Malaysia Airlines had installed that kind of security measure it certainly would make the Spoof scenario significantly less likely. Hopefully investigators have looked into it.
@Lazslo, No, MH370 didn’t have enough fuel to reach the South Pole. It’s very far.
@Cheddar, If the plane landed at Yubileyniy (or anywhere in Kazakhstan for that matter), refueled, and took off again, it could have flown anywhere in Russia without any chance of being detected by the outside world. Throw in a paint job and it could go anywhere at all. It could be sitting on the tarmac at O’Hare right now!
@Jeff, it should go without saying that if IR sat images of the “dirt rectangle” existed immediately before and after March 8, 2014, I would be very keen to see them.
I think that Jeff did a very important thing with the Yubileyniy post and it was more or less intentional. Identifying correctly that MH370 open research got stuck he started a blog-wide brainstorming session to get new ideas. This is excellent policy and a very brave thing to do as the brainstorming process inevitably involves raising ideas that may hurt one’s reputation. This risk can’t be avoided as such ideas often lead to better ones that solve the problem at hand. It’s somewhat like a potential barrier that must be crossed in order to break out.
Few people would dare to do such a thing in private, much less on a forum open to the public under their real name but Jeff is brave, he proved it in the past. I think we should all appreciate his big contribution to solving the mystery of MH370 and cooperate with his noble project.
The essence of brainstorming is raising ideas with as little self-criticism as possible then checking them against facts, logic and science with the help of one’s peers. Almost anything goes but everything must stand later a tough check. The first stage requires suspending judgment, people must be allowed to raise crazy ideas without losing face in the future.
If there is a plane on the bottom of the SIO and it’ll be found soon it would certainly be a step ahead but we aren’t compelled to wait. Another avenue is investigating the info we already have to dig new clues and facts like Lucy, Niels and Orion are doing magnificently.
Jeff expressed in the past his view that this forum is an important tool to solve the mystery and he’s of course right. We should make one more effort, the solution may be just around the corner.
@Jeff
“I also believe that this plane went north and landed. Look how fast they found the wreckage from the AirAsia plane that went down in December. Things and people float when planes go down in the water.”
for the north route you would need a joint conspiracy of at least India, China and Russia, how likely is that really? They are indeed some kind of allies but it’s just too far-fetched.
Also there is a possibility the plane was human-controlled till the end, got sunk and is now lying on the bottom.
However that would dismiss the official hypothesis as there is almost no chance you could sink it in roaring forties which would imply a way northern point on the arc. (I have a friend which is both sailor and pilot, he is sure one would have trouble landing a seaplane there let alone an airliner).
This is one write up here in Australia, it’s certainly going far and wide.
http://www.watoday.com.au/world/mh370-flew-to-kazakhstan-jeff-wise-outlines-new-theory-20150304-13u2gu.html
Russia and China are allies, so if the plane landed in Russia, it MUST have been orchestrated by China.
There is NO WAY in hell that Putin would hijack a plane load of CHINESE passengers. There is ZERO chance that Putin would risk enraging the Chinese. Zero.
Step back from all the data, step back from all the evidence, and ask: who in the world is (a) intelligent and (b) mischievous enough to hijack the plane? It’s China.
We know the Chinese cyber attacks are relentless, so should we not also expect those who wrote The Art Of War are also active on other areas of sly war? Is this a ruse for China to snoop around and map the Indian Ocean in the southern corridor?
@Michael R, The goal here is to set aside our feelings of absolute certainty and ask where the evidence and data can lead us.
No JACC/ATSB Operational Update yesterday. Did they give advance notice that it would be foregone/delayed?
If not: isn’t this the first unannounced miss?
I haven’t said your conclusions about the data are wrong, you are right to let the data speak for itself. I’ve just talked about the political context in which Putin would never hijack a plane full of Chinese passengers (unless he’s working with China). And the political context of who is a leading global mischief maker i.e. China via cyberwar.
Politically speaking, Putin would not say “boo” to China, let alone hijack a plane full of Chinese passengers. So if the plane landed in Russia, it’s a good bet that it was orchestrated by China, and Russia is playing its part.
Speaking of evidence, compare the pictures of grieving Chinese families with those of Malaysia and Australia. What do you notice? The Chinese families almost never show photos of their “dead” relatives, whereas the Malaysian and Australian families boldly show photos. Is this a weird Chinese cultural thing, or is this fake Chinese grieving?
e.g. See these mostly obscured photos of family relatives. Very strange:
http://www.morung.com/articles/touching-stories-family-members-flight-mh370-victims/2200
And didn’t the grieving Chinese families in Malaysia seem a little over dramatic?
Anyway, thanks for thinking outside the box. It still fits with my guess that China orchestrated the whole thing.
@jeffwise: In the spoof scenario, the power up of the AES at 18:25 is needed in order to create the “false breadcrumbs” leading to the SIO as the plane flew north. However, a spoof of the BFO data greatly increases the complexity of the scenario,the required level of sophistication of the perps, and the assumed level of sophistication of the investigators.
I am more inclined to believe that the AES was powered up so that any messages sent to the AES could be received and monitored by the perps. All communications outbound were shutdown at around 17:21, but we have evidence of only the AES power up at 18:25. In fact, once the cockpit was secured by the perps, the HF, VHF, and SATCOM radios all might have been powered up for monitoring communications. If so, there would only be evidence of the SATCOM power up as receiving voice communications over the other radios has no need for a “log-in”. Disabling ACARS via the CDU in the cockpit only affects transmitted data. All incoming satellite data would continue to be received.
If the plane is not in the SIO, then the BTO does suggest a flight to or near Kazakhstan, although I am more inclined to believe a refueling at Kyzylorda Airport rather than Yubileyniy as it is closer to the 7th arc and has better facilities, including an ILS suitable for an auto-land. I am also more inclined to believe it was a heist rather than Putin threatening to start WW III.
But if the plane did not fly south, the BFO data still must be explained if it was not spoofed. I am still exploring the possibility that we are not interpreting the BFO data correctly. After the log-in at 18:25, the trend of the BFO data changed. The theory that MH370 ended in the SIO rests on the assumption that the AES did not change its behavior but the path did change by turning south. I am exploring whether the path continued to the north and the AES changed its behavior. I still not ready to report results, but I will say there are some interesting possibilities.
@MichaelR ” Is this a ruse for China to snoop around and map the Indian Ocean in the southern corridor?”
well those are international waters, noone would forbid them to map the ocean floor anyway…
@Victor,
Interesting thoughts. I’m open to the possibility that it was a heist. Huge monetary gain is a clear cut motive. A disassembled B777 is apparently worth a lot of money and if the perps were after a very special kind of cargo, maybe having been tipped off by an insider, it would explain the antsiness and early obfuscation attempts of the Malaysian officials. A heist could still be silently state sponsored, though…
As to the BFOs having been interpreted the wrong way – that would’ve been an incredible stroke of luck for the perps, especially since Inmarsat’s and the IG’s calculations placed the plane in one of the remotest and most inaccessable places in the world.I’m not sure what’s more unlikely: such a stroke of luck or highly sophisticated perps. But who knows… we will wait for your results. And thanks a lot for your openmindedness and for continuing to investigate different scenarios.
@littlefoot: As many here know, there are relationships by marriage between the families of the ruling elites in Malaysia and Kazakhstan. The US press has pointed to the corrupt practices of the recent Kazakh bridegroom. This on top of the reticence of Malaysia to conduct a true investigation might be pointing to something.
Jeff I have thought almost from the start this aircraft wasn’t in the water. I am a high time military test pilot and now civilian experimental test pilot with a major manufactorer. Do not stop looking. I want to ask you something however. Is it possible anything airborne got that close to Diego Garcia and the USAF didn’t see it?
Hi All,
I have been reading comments on this site for many months now, and appreciate all of the effort and comments by so many. Thanks Jeff, for keeping the “MOTEL 6” light on for this forum.
I liked Nihonmama’s description a few weeks back of a crime scene investigation team, and the difference between the forensic experts and the street detectives. I identify most with the street detective, who looks at various pieces of evidence and tries to sort through everything and connect some of the dots.
As I have read and listened to all the back and forth comments since last summer, I have never felt very comfortable with the SIO scenario. I appreciated VictorI’s candor recently when he said:
“My guess is that if the plane flew north, it is explained by our inability to correctly interpret the BFO values.”
I am looking at a northern route scenario, outlined in two postings:
Part #1: Last Military Radar, and
Part #2: Northern Route: Speed & Flight Path
Part #1: MILITARY RADAR:
Most all of the modeling to date has been based on a Beijing hotel screenshot, showing a 2:22 am radar. I wish I could embrace the essence of this radar, but there’s that nagging, “gut” feeling that something is not quite right. The way it was presented, which has also concerned a lot of people, plus the lack of compelling evidence supporting this Thai military radar. Maybe they confused 370 with another a/c along N571 about the same time. I don’t know. But there are just too many unanswered questions, (IMO) for me to trust it.
The Malaysian military radar did plot a different track and location. They reported the plane was headed northwest towards IGREX at 2:15 am. (One report later updated this time by air force chief Tan Sri Rodzali Daud, who said the 2:15 am time was 2:30 am).
Recapping the 2:15 am radar report, “Reuters News Service, reported this on March 14, 2014:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/us-malaysia-airlines-radar-exclusive-idUSBREA2D0DG20140314
“Two sources said an unidentified aircraft that investigators believe was Flight MH370 was following a route between navigational waypoints when it was last plotted on military radar off the country’s northwest coast. This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said. The last plot on the military radar’s tracking suggested the plane was flying toward India’s Andaman Islands, a chain of isles between the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal, they said.
“Malaysia’s Air Force Chief said on Wednesday (March 12th) an aircraft that could have been the missing plane was plotted on military radar at 2:15 a.m., 200 miles northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia’s west coast. This position marks the limit of Malaysia’s military radar in that part of the country, a fourth source familiar with the investigation told Reuters.
“When asked about the range of military radar at a news conference on Thursday (March 13th), Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said it was “a sensitive issue” that he was not going to reveal. “Even if it doesn’t extend beyond that, we can get the co-operation of the neighboring countries,” he said.
“They also gave new details on the direction in which the unidentified aircraft was heading – following aviation corridors identified on maps used by pilots as N571 and P628. These routes are taken by commercial planes flying from Southeast Asia to the Middle East or Europe and can be found in public documents issued by regional aviation authorities.
“The military track suggests it then turned sharply westwards, heading towards a waypoint called “VAMPI”, northeast of Indonesia’s Aceh province and a navigational point used for planes following route N571 to the Middle East. From there, the plot indicates the plane flew towards a waypoint called “GIVAL”, south of the Thai island of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called “IGREX”, on route P628 that would take it over the Andaman Islands and which carriers use to fly towards Europe.
“The time was then 2:15 a.m. That is the same time given by the air force chief on Wednesday, who gave no information on that plane’s possible direction. The sources said Malaysia was requesting raw radar data from neighbors Thailand, Indonesia and India, which has a naval base in the Andaman Islands.”
Why this radar was discarded is a big question. If 370 flew over the Strait of Malacca at a lower than normal altitude, along with an erratic flight path and then turned towards waypoint GIVAL, these two factors (& possibly others) may have confused Malaysian officials. Inmarsat’s satellite data also became available about the same time, which required a radar track farther south and closer to Indonesia. Who knows why Malaysia officials accepted the Thai radar while ignoring their own military radar.
But (IMO), the Air Force chief’s first report (quoted above), accurately reported the location and tracking of MH370 heading toward waypoint IGREX.
I know I will get some flak for supporting this radar, but for my northern route scenario to work, the plane had to start on P628, somewhere between GIVAL and IGREX.
Part # 2: Northern Route: Speed, & Flight Path (Posting soon).
The BTO data predicts either
1) surface debris hitting Oz shores by now, per expert drift analysis starting at the area the southern path ended, or
2) real-time interception by one of MULTIPLE, NON-ALLIED, NUCLEAR nations through whose airspace the northern route runs.
The fact that neither of these things happened calls the BTO data itself into question.
@Littlefoot
There is a pervasive notion among most posters that the correct interpretation of the Inmarsat data inevitably leads to the SIO. This notion is completely incorrect. What leads to the SIO is an assumption regarding flight dynamics by Inmarsat, ATSB collaborators, and the IG. It is possible to construct a path to virtually any location on the 7th arc in the Southern hemisphere that satisfies the Inmarsat data by making different assumptions relative to flight dynamics.
It may even be possible to construct Northern paths that satisfy the satellite data. I don’t know because I have not tried.
I cannot be more emphatic about this point since not understanding it leads to an entire web of misconceptions.
@DennisW, you are incorrect. The BFO data unambiguously indicates that the AES went into the southern hemisphere, completely independent of anything related to flight dynamics.
DennisW exactly, at the end it’s just assumption that for some reason no official wants to even question.
And there is no motivation why would anyone want the plane to finish there, suicide with intention of sinking? He wouldn’t go for roaring forties. Throwing it away from the mainland? It would be directed SW not SE. Whatever scenario you could imagine noone would want the plane to go there. The only possibility is that after doing turn around Indonesia there was a physical conflict on board which prevented both pilots from controlling the plane and autopilot resuming cruising altitude & constant heading.
@jeffwise
there were several people on Duncan Steel blog calculating that the possible circular flight path could fit all BTO&BFO data (within margin of error), could it be they are all wrong?
@Jeff
Maybe. As I said, I don’t know because I have not tried it. I am not incorrect. I am ignorant on this point, and so are you.
Some odds and ends from India and Pakistan, the Maldives sightings and one possible explanation for what they saw: https://abn397.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/mh-370-miscellaneous-notes/
@DennisW, Respectfully, I don’t think you have any basis on which to say that I am ignorant on this point.
@StevanG, Yes, they could.
@jeffwise
if BFO&BTO is everything you need to estimate the final point then why would officials set any assumptions?
I have checked the official report again, there are Analysis A,B and C and every of those has some assumptions.
@dj:
“Is it possible anything airborne got that close to Diego Garcia and the USAF didn’t see it?”
Is your question rhetorical? 😉
@Bob Det:
“I liked Nihonmama’s description a few weeks back of a crime scene investigation team, and the difference between the forensic experts and the street detectives. I identify most with the street detective, who looks at various pieces of evidence and tries to sort through everything and connect some of the dots.”
Thanks Bob. Hope you bring the radar discussion to the new thread.
@StevanG, @DennisW:
“in theory, the plane could be ANYWHERE ON A LARGE SPHERE around the satellite”
https://twitter.com/RWMann/status/471824874554408960
True or false?
@Jeff
With equal respect, it is virtually impossible to prove a negative which is what you appear to be claiming. My “guess” (not a claim) is that by incorporating altitude changes, as implausible as they might be, one can construct a path to anywhere on the 7th arc. BFO is an extremely sensitive function of rate of climb (or descent).
@Nihonmama
I believe the plane could be anywhere on the 7th arc limited only by the fuel range. I remain very confident of the BTO values (assuming they were not spoofed). As I stated above, I have not investigated whether ROC can be manipulated to satisfy a Northern hemisphere path.