By MPat
(Note: A comment by reader Lauren H brought my attention to an analysis I’d overlooked by reader MPat. As Lauren H points out, it’s as timely now as it was when MPat first aired it back in March. — JW)
The potential arrival of more debris in the East African region is triggering interest once more in the currents and drift patterns in the SIO. To sense check the concept that debris could drift from the current search area to these regions I did a little research of my own, the premise being that the observed behaviour of real floating objects (and I am considering of course the buoys of the Global Drifter Program) should be a useful indicator of possible drift pathways, as a counterpoint to cell-based drift simulation models (which may be calibrated to high level drifter behaviour but typically lack the resolution to reproduce drifter movement in detail).
The full drifter database contains meta-data and trajectories for almost 19800 buoys worldwide (some 1400 are currently active). The meta-data includes timing of drogue loss, and a ‘death’ code to categorise the end of life status of buoys that cease transmitting. It is clear from this that drogues are typically lost in a surprisingly short timeframe. It is also notable that only 20% of all the buoys have ended their lives by running aground, with 66% simply ceasing transmission for undocumented reasons.
I have filtered out buoys that have at any time in their lives passed through the locality of the current search zone, based on a rectangle bounded by longitudes 88 to 96 degrees and latitudes -32 to -39 degrees. None were present in this area at the time of the crash, but I consider in any case all buoys that have ever been in this location (dates range from 1995 to 2014). There are 177 in this category. Of these, 39 are listed as having subsequently run aground. The locations at which they washed up are shown in the plot above.
Of the 39, 31 beached on East African coastlines, only 7 in Western Australia, and 1 in Sumatra. An example of 3 randomly chosen trajectories from the 31 that drifted west are shown below together with the box defining search locality :
The average time for buoys to reach their western beaching point after leaving the search box is 534 days (~ 18 months) with minimum 234 days (~ 8 months) and maximum 1263 days (~ 42 months). All but 3 were un-drogued during this journey, and those 3 lost their drogues en-route. For those arriving in Western Australia, the average time to beach was 362 days, with minimum 79 days and maximum 513 days.
If we relax the criterion that the buoys must end by running aground, and simply look at the locations where they eventually stopped transmitting after leaving the search area, we see the following three plots which display the 54 buoys that ended up west of longitude 55 deg (the longitude of Reunion Island),
the 12 that ended east of longitude 109 deg (coast of Western Australia),
and the 111 that remained in between:
Clearly the transport qualities of the ocean currents and weather systems will vary from month to month and year to year. It is also not clear how representative the buoys would be of the drift characteristics of floating debris resulting from a crashed aircraft. Neverthless I believe it is reasonable to propose from the buoy behaviour noted above across a 20 year drifting history that :
i) there is a strong tendency for objects that have been present in the current search area to remain trapped in the mid ocean gyre over extended periods
ii) a proportion, perhaps as high as 10% of robustly floating debris, might be expected to make landfall within 18 months of the crash
iii) the vast majority of the debris making landfall is likely to do so across the coastlines and islands of eastern Africa, with relatively little beaching in Australia.
For what it is worth, I have more background and analysis in a write-up that I hope to post soon.
Please also note that a vastly more expert analysis of drifter behaviour has been performed in October last year by David Griffin of CSIRO, in which he uses composite drifter trajectories to infer a likelihood function for where the MH370 flaperon may have originated. This is well worth a read.
UPDATE 79/2016: Reader Richard Cole has posted a link to a .kml file that shows the trajectories of the drifters that reached Australia. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like if you drop the file into Google Earth. Interesting to note that the greater part of the debris winds up on the southern coast and Tasmania rather than the western coast.
@Gysbreght
Yes, but combining the few certainties in drift studies, the debris and the Inmarsat data will together create more certainties that will help defining a more probable and evidence-based scenario and crash area.
I’m convinced of that.
IMO more drifter based drift studies are required and more debris finds and analysis (which I’m sure will follow) to add even more certainties.
@Ge Rijn: I’m not sure that uncertainties add up to certainties.
@Gysbreght
Two uncertainties can create one bigger certainty.
That’s what a lot of mathematics is about.
@Ge Rijn: How many of the 177 buoys that passed through the area in the years 1995 – 2014, did so in March 2014?
The one buoy from Richard Cole’s .kml file which nearly reached Indonesia, originated from ~38S,90E… Google Earth didn’t understand I wanted to save the file, but I carefully deleted all other trajectories (many appear multiply reduplicated ?) to isolate the one which nearly reached Indonesia, and it originated SE of the 7th arc, at ~37-38S.
@Gysbrecht @Erik Nelson
The time period doesn’t matter for on average currents and wind directions stay the same over long periods of time. 20 years ago they were on average the same as in march 2014. 100 years ago they were on average the same too.
If they had put 177 drifters at once devided over the box in march 2014 you would get in general similar results IMO.
@Erik Nelson
I’m curious about that trajectory to Java. Are you able to put your result in dropbox?
If not is the trajectory to Java following close along the W.Australian shore line?
@Ge Rijn:
The oceanic currents and the atmospheric movements both result from the rotation of the earth around its axis, the orientation of that axis to its orbit around the sun, the radiation of energy received from the sun, the gravitational force exerted by the moon, the interactions between ocean and atmosphere.
What makes you think that oceanic currents are more constant than wind and weather? Have you never heard about El Ninjo?
@Joseph Coleman
Thanks, that makes a very compelling suggestion for ~35S. Please peruse the following picture, combining the search areas plot from Dr. Duncan Steel’s article, with the GE-plotted drifts, of the Feb-May time-limited set of buoys, from Richard Cole’s .kml file:
https://s31.postimg.org/nz6px3myj/French_Satellite_drift.png
The best fit with the drifter data is westward drift, to F1-F3, from ~35S, i.e. essentially Inmarsat’s best candidate flight path.
@Ge Rijn:
Quoting from MPat’s post above:
@Ken S
Ok, I slept on the drone technology hijacking motive, and I cannot make it work for me. There is nothing about drones that is worth stealing. Hobbyists have been flying radio controlled airplanes long before drones even existed as a military weapon. Where is the secret sauce? There is none. Simply a matter of tooling up and doing it. Having the real article sitting in front of you would not be a significant advantage. It would be like the Japanese stealing an American car to compete in auto industry.
I think the biggest challenge relative to making military drones work is the radio infrastructure required to control them, and the GPS and inertial technology employed. You don’t get that by stealing a drone or a drone control station.
@Dennis
Here’s an article which proves how much the Chinese are interested in stealing US drone technology and how much they are willing to pay for such technology. The article also states that the US Gov considers the theft of such technology a serious threat to their National Security.
http://touch.sun-sentinel.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84805023/
I don’t think it’s so much the hardware that they were after but more the software which would give them the Command Codes, signal protocal, and data encryption of the control signals for the drones. This would give them the ability to hack into the US drone network and possibly be able to control and disable US drones. I think this is what the Chinese were really after.
@Gysbreght
I endorse your views.
There is a vast body of literature associated with drift modeling, and the modelers are always careful to point out the frailties associated with the methodology – not only the variability of the ocean medium, but also how wind effects individual drifting objects depending on their shape and freeboard. Drifter data is certainly better than nothing, but it is not possible as you know to draw anything but broad inferences.
Even finding debris that is out there is a stochastic process in an of itself i.e. just because no debris has been found in Australia does not mean there is none deposited there.
Having said all that, I too had some difficulty with Ge Rijn’s notions of information theory and likelihood estimation. I have given up on him.
@Ken S
There are many many examples of restricted export items. Even when selling GPS receivers commercially we were required to include code that disabled the receiver above a certain altitude and above a certain speed (the so-called CoCom export limits). The idea being that the receiver did not come back to the US in a nosecone. Many (hundreds of thousands) of these receivers found their way into China. The difficulty of extracting and reverse engineering compiled code is a formidable hurdle and is deemed sufficiently difficult (virtually impossible) to make these items safe for export.
You might recall that our own federal government was unable to hack an iPhone which they had in their possession. Having a physical article and reverse engineering SW contained in it is simply a non-starter.
According to a U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet the MQ-9 Reaper drone is powered by a Honeywell TPE331-10GD turboprop engine and is capable of 200 kt cruising speed and 1,000 NM range. Unit cost is US$64.2 million including four aircraft, sensors, GCSs and Comm. in fiscal 2006 dollars.
@Dennis
I agree it is a formidable task to back engineer any piece of hardware and it’s source code. I have done this in the past on circuit boards but it is not impossible to do this.
Case in point, look at all the Chinese knock-offs of IPhones that are sold on the blaxk market in China. How did they do that?
My belief is that the 20 engineers from Freescale may have been already busy back engineering the stolen hardware prior to their flight on MH370 and that’s why they had to be eliminated as well.
@Ken
I looked at the Freescale angle early on. The engineers on board MH370 were process engineers concerned with ASIC fabrication. They were not at all involved in the design of the ASIC internals.
Building a clone of something has more to do with copying the user experience. The Chinese knockoffs are not running any version of iOS, just a home-brew OS (or Android) that creates a similar user experience. Likewise with Android itself. If you don’t mind the embarrassment associated with pulling an Android device out in a public place, it provides a similar user experience to iOS.
@Ken
This thread reminds me of a true story regarding Smith and Wesson. They were (and are) getting killed by Glock in the polymer handgun market. The president of S&W walked into an engineering staff meeting and tossed a Glock on the conference room table and said “build one of these”. Months later the S&W SD VE series appeared. I bought one, and it is a far cry from my Glocks.
Likewise I doubt APPL is losing any sleep over the Chinese knockoffs themselves. Chinese import restrictions are another matter entirely.
@Dennis
Intersting you mentioned they were “process engineers in ASIC fabrication” because any engineer who works in this field must be very familiaf with ASIC design as well as it’s fabrication processes.
These are exactly the type of engineers you would want looking at circuit boards which may contain several ASIC chips on them. They may have been process engineers in fabrication but this does not mean they do not have a background in ASIC chip design.
When I use to work for a company in Montreal, designing high speed video graphic boards, we use to have all day meetings back engineering our competitors graphic boards and in those meeting we always had at least 1 or 2 ASIC design engineers looking at these boards and studying the ASIC graphics chips. There were also some process fabrication engineers in those meetings as well.
I would like to learn more about the backgrounds of these engineers, such as where they studied? What was their previous work backgrounds? Were any of them members of the military in China? What were they doing in Malaysia? When did they arrive there? Where did they stay?
@Gysbreght @DennisW
El Ninjo occures in the pacific not in the IO. Offcourse there are yearly variations but over a long period of time those currents and winds generaly stay the same. Sailors depended and trusted on them for many centuries and will for many centuries to come.
Statiscaly those drifter based drift models like the one of M Pat are relevant.
IMO if you refuse to take them seriously like you suppose to do, you choose to stay only sceptic and with that narrow minded. And we all know that leads to no solutions at all.
@DennisW
I can easily give up on your scenario the debris and crash area must be near Sumatra/Java. A lot of arguments I (and others) posted allready count that possibility to almost zero. But I won’t completely count it out and won’t have the arrogance of giving up on you or anybody whos is making a serious thoughtfull effort.
That would be a stupid- not intelligent thing to do IMO.
I read your latest comment on your blog. IMO you choose the drift study that suits your opinions best. The Geomar study.
This is a reverse drift study that adds chaos the wrong way. Not suitable for predicting a more precize crash area therefore IMO.
IMO for you counts the same. If you refuse to look further by sticking to your own scenario against all odds no progress will follow.
The Freescale company has since been bought by a Dutch chip manufacturer. If someone wanted to obtain Freescale engineering know-how, wouldn’t a take-over be the obvious way to obtain it?
@DennisW
I read your blog article once more.
You state that all drift studies are by definition reverse drift studies.
This just is not true.
If you take a virtual piece of debris (or a drifter) in a pressumed crash area and follow that piece on the prevaling currents till it lands somewhere, you’re making a forward drift study.
If you take a piece of landed debris (or a drifter) from its landing point and follow it back on all the possible currents where it could have came from you’re making a reverse drift study.
Now it’s obvious to me a forward drift study like this can lead to many landing points but on the opposite a reverse drift study will lead to many possible starting points. Therefore a reverse drift study like this is not suitable for predicting a more precize crash area. And the Geomar and other reverse drift studies like this show this obviously in their visual lay outs.
On the other hand a reverse drift study of landed drifters can be very usefull cause they can be tracked back precisely to where they came from.
With landed debris this is impossible.
As requested a slightly higher resolution picture of the trajectories of the 39 beaching drifters that passed close to the search zone.
http://i67.tinypic.com/nvntwl.jpg
@Ge Rijn
I am done discussing things with you.
@Trip
Here are my answers to your questions.
“Was shahs simulator programmed with sio data after the fact to implicate him?”
I have no knowledge of this however my gut feeling tells me that may have been a planted story in order to raise suspicion and direct blame at Capt Z.
“Could trade off have happened at mekar instead of igari? Isn’t it easier to swap when you turn on ACRS out of radar range?”
No, if MH370 was the plane tracked across the Malaysian Pennisula seen on radar it would have arrived near Sumatar before Kate Tee’s sighting. It must have been flying at low altitudes and slower airspeeds after IGARI to arrive near the tip of Bada Aceh around the time Kate T saw low flying plane.
“Where does oth radar range at Diego Garcia overlap pings?”
No idea, officially DG has only a SPS-49 microwave radar, which is 1960’s technology, which only has a range of 250 nm. but satellite photos seem to suggest they may have OTH radar now if so it may have to same range as JORN approx 3000Km. Nothing is published on this of course.
“Why would plane fly so low over Maldives when it was trying to hide?”
My guess is they were trying to evade radar detection from the Male airport which they would have been in range of at that time.
“Why not fly directly to Diego Garcia to off load drone material?”
Two reasons, they would not have had enough fuel to get to DG especially if they needed to fly at low altitudes. Secondly with this kind of mission you would not want to do this on an airbase that may have many civiilian pwrsonnel as witnesses. This would be the kind of operation you would want to do in remote secluded secure location with no witnesses whatsoever.
“I can see Freescale develops microprocessors for drones. When did Freescale employees leave Beijing and why were they going to Malaysia?”
Still researching this, don’t know.
“Where do you think decoy 777 took off from? An empty decoy plane could have flown a much longer distance, down to 40s. What bases were they using for the Thai US joint military exercises?”
If the US were behind this they have several airbases in South East Asia. My guess is Clark AFB in Phillipines.
I’m not sure what bases were used in Thai/US military exercise.
“The US, Chinese and Malaysian governments would have all been aware of this and there is no interest among any party to disclose information, so the secrecy among the governments makes sense.”
Don’t forget Australia as well, their allies with the US too.
Cheers,
@Ken
Process engineers are not generally concerned with what an ASIC does or how it does it. The is very heavy lifting. The process engineers I have worked with are more concerned with yield, power management, ripple, IO considerations,… They are very unlikely to have any familiarity with detailed ASIC functionality. I am reminded of the Far Side cartoon – “Michelangelo Meets the House Painters”.
@Ken
Question for you. Some time ago I read a description of a B777 simulation run West to East along the coast of Sumatra. I was almost sure it was in conjunction with one of your early papers discussing a CI scenario. Do you have any recollection or history on this? If so, can you point me in the right direction? I have not been able to find it again despite some pretty heavy duty searching.
@Ge Rijn
I think saying ‘no aircraft debris inbound in Australia’ is a bit premature. That is until somebody has made a serious search along it.
It is huge coastline with just scattered towns along it. Some parts very inhospitable.It took 79 years to find a famous aviators aircraft in Central Australia. (1929-1978) An interesting story in its own right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra_(aircraft)
Cheers Tom L
@DennisW
No, unfortunetly I have no recollection of this B777 simulation.
@Trip
Thanks for mentioning the fact that Freescale manufatures microprocessors that are used in drones.
From what I have learned is that they are active in the commercial drone market and have several microprooser chips for this market.
But I have also read they have manufactured chips for the US DoD for various military systems such as missile guidence systems, drone systems, navigitional systems etc.
If these guys at Freescale were trying to steal a US drone system off the US military chances are the circuits boards would contain ASIC chips manufactured by Freescale. Oh how convient.
Much easier to back engineer the technology if your company already manufactures the ASIC chips used on board. Piece of cake!
@Ken
It would be more accurate to say Freescale manufactures the ASIC’s used. Almost everyone uses the ARMx (as does Freescale) which is a standard ASIC building block. It is what you wrap around the ARMx that distinguishes your offering. Freescale has nothing to do with ARM RISC processor.
@DennisW
I am referring to custom ASIC chips that are already programmed with embedded code by Freescale for US DoD hardware not the ARMx processor.
@DennisW
I must confess I am not an expert on ASIC design process but the company I used work at designed custom ASIC chips for our video graphic boards. The design data was sent to China and the chips were manufactured with our embedded code, wafer design and part number on them. These were completely custom designed chips.
My background is more at the circuit board level not the chip design so I am really not that familiar with the ASIC design process but I just know that we made our own custom designed ASIC and we had manufactures in China make them.
@Ken
Back on topic. The notion of a hijacking to steal drone technology is preposterous. There is really nothing of significant value to be gained in doing so. My guess is that someone invented a reason for the hijacking, but simply picked the wrong one. Now a nuclear weapon would be very different. The barriers to entry are significantly higher in that domain.
@Dennis
You’re misssing the point, the US DoD has invested billions in developing a Global Drone Network. ( Read drone papers on my blog) . If the Chinese got their hands on US drone technology that could help them devlope their own drone systems or worst yet hack into the US drone network this would be consider a serious threat to the US National Security .
I believe in their minds they would not let that happen and it would justify hijacking a commercial airliner to prevent such military hardware getting into the hands of the Chinese.
@Ken
We just disagree. Nothing wrong with that. I am definitely not missing the point. I just think your point is dumb.
There is no such thing as drone technology. Wake up. It is simply a logical extension of hobbyist activity. There is no “secret sauce”. I could do it myself easily with a team of people I already know.
@DennisW
Let me be clear on this I believe it was the Chinese who were stealing sensitive US drone technology and were trying ro smuggle it into China on board MH370.
The Chinese calculated this was the safest way to transport the cargo simce they believed the US would not harm the passengers. I believe they calculated wrong.
I believe the US would stop at nothing to defend their National Security and prevent such sensitive technology from getting into the hands of Chinese and compromising the security of their Global Drone network. The US hijacked MH370 to retrieve that cargo and make sure those Freescale engineers died as well and made it look like a tragic accident.
If you want to think this is a dumb theory then go right ahead, I won’t try to convince you.
You know what I think is a dumb theory? Believing the captain did this to commit suicide in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Ridiculous! That’s a stupid theory on so many levels.
@DennisW asked, “Some time ago I read a description of a B777 simulation run West to East along the coast of Sumatra. I was almost sure it was in conjunction with one of your early papers discussing a CI scenario. Do you have any recollection or history on this? If so, can you point me in the right direction? I have not been able to find it again despite some pretty heavy duty searching.”
I believe you are talking about the work of Stew Stoddart, who tried to tie together Kate Tee’s sighting with satellite and aircraft performance data.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=stew+stoddart+mh370
@Tom Lindsay
Yes that would be premature. Most of the time I add ‘not yet’ or ‘still’. You probably read a post I forgot to do that.
I discussed the remoteness of the WA shores especialy north of Geralton till Exmouth some time ago and the possibility of debris there that still is not found.
I’m well aware of the desolation and inhospitality of those shores and the inlands of WA. I drove that coastline from Augusta till Exmouth and through the inlands back to Perth for two months.
You’re right the desolation and inhospitality of fast stretches are bewildering and even frightening sometimes but of a timeless beauty often.
Thanks for the link!
@DennisW
I am not talking about f@&ing hobby drones I am talking about million dollar military drones for Christ sakes.. You and your buddies will never be able to build a drone command and control cenrter for a military drone without access the proprietary and classified information, impossible .
Please don’t bullshit me on this because I have worked for defense contarctors in the past and you must sign a proprietary agreement before you even see any data and even then you don’t have access to all design info. No way can hackers build such a unit without access to this proprietary and signal encryption info, that’s just total BS.
I’m done with this convo
@Ken
Sorry to let the air out of your balloon. Your rant says nothing relative to the technological barriers to entry of which there are none. A radio controlled airplane is what it is.
Why are you being so dumb in your responses?
@DennisW
You did not even start discussing with me. You chose to post your opinion on my views on your own blog without adressing me or discussing them first.
I guess it just has to sink in with time.
@DennisW
If you think you can build a drone control unit for military drone from off the shelf parts you buy at DigiKey a wholesale electronics store you are sadly mistaken. It tells me you really don’t understand this subject matter at all.
No point in me continuing to waste my time with you on this.
@Ken
OK.
@Ken S and @DennisW: One possible US technology of interest to the Chinese is AESA radar technology that could be used in HQ-9 SAMs to help them defend naval bases like Woody Island in the SCS. In the past, the US blocked Israel from supplying radar technology to China out of fear it would fall in the hands of Iran.
http://www.janes.com/article/58071/china-deploys-hq-9-surface-to-air-missiles-to-woody-island
That said, I don’t think the disappearance of MH370 was related to technology theft.
@VictorI
Yes there are other possibilities as to what this cargo could be. Maybe it’s not drone technology but some other sensitive military technology. That certainly is a possibilty.
@Ge Rijn
We have had many discussions without any convergence. It could be a language issue, It could be a cultural issue, It could be a technologically related training issue. I really do not know.
Suffice to say that we look at the world differently. No problem on my end. I just think you are a whacko. Does not mean you are a whacko. Feel free to express your opinons here. I will not comment on them unless they are outrageously wrong.
@DennisW
To me the issue shows in this latest answer to me and other posts from you; it’s your arrogant and devaluating attitude.
That’s not a cultural issue or a training issue but a personality issue.
I advise you to take a look in the mirror and rethink what you say the next time.
@Ge Rijn
I will do that.
@Joseph Coleman @Erik Nelson
“Regarding (@Erik Nelson’s) comment Posted July 10, 2016 at 12:55 AM, there were area gaps that were not surface searched.
It’s a big oceon. Perhaps there were items that were seen but not regarded as debris from a plane and disregarded. We’ll never know. Or perhaps there were items not assosiated with plane debris that were floating photographed and disregarded and are currently perhaps on coastal shores. It would be nice if we were publically given a list of all possible debris verified or not with dates, times and imagery to see if any existing or future debris from anything came from the approx current and past search areas, to help with drift models.”
I would suggest starting with a 20 day reverse drift from 32deg 28’S and 97deg 49’E to an intersection of the 7th arc.
That is the location where two large rectangular objects (possibly one the flaperon) were spotted by RAAF P3 Orion search crews on 28 March 2014, and subsequently not recovered by search ships presumably due to rough seas.
http://m.imgur.com/a/3rsLD
Although this item was discussed here in the past, I think it is important enough to revisit. Whether or not you believe in the hijack scenario proposed by Simon Hardy and Byron Bailey (there are parts I think are unlikely), Mr. Bailey does claim he received an important piece of information from the ATSB.
***
Several months after the MH370 disappearance I was told by a government source that the FBI had recovered from Zaharie’s home computer deleted information showing flight plan waypoints. Here, I assumed, was the smoking gun. To fly to the southern Indian Ocean, which has no airway leading from north of Sumatra to the south, the pilot would need to define flight plan waypoints via latitude and longitude for insertion in the FMC.
When nothing about this emerged from ATSB I rang my source. He confirmed what he had told me and left me with the impression that the FBI were of the opinion that Zaharie was responsible for the crash.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Joshua Campbell told The Australian: “We are assisting our Malaysian partners with their investigation, but unfortunately I cannot comment further as this remains an ongoing investigation.”
***
I will say that through some back channels, we have learned that the ATSB did investigate reports of coordinates of a flight path to the SIO found on the pilot’s computer, but the ATSB found no data that has directly assisted in the definition of the search area.
My interpretation is that the FBI has supplied to the ATSB details about the coordinates found on the pilot’s computer, but did not believe the data points were useful to find the aircraft. Whether or not the data points were useful, if coordinates in the SIO were found, this would certainly be a smoking gun. For many reasons, I believe that Bailey is correct, in agreement with previous claims by Miles O’Brien.