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US Navy Strategists Have a Long History of Finding the Lost
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Benedict Carey reports at the NYT that the uncertainties surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's disappearance are enormous, but naval strategists have been unraveling lost-at-sea mysteries as far back as the U-boat battles of World War II, and perhaps most dramatically in 1968, when an intelligence team found the submarine Scorpion, which sank in the North Atlantic after losing contact under equally baffling circumstances. "The same approach we used with Scorpion could be applied in this case and should be," says John P. Craven who helped pioneer the use of Bayesian search techniques to locate objects lost at sea. "But you need to begin with the right people." The approach is a kind of crowdsourcing, but not one in which volunteers pored over satellite images, like they have in search of Flight 370. "That effort is akin to good Samaritans combing a forest for a lost child without knowing for certain that the child is there," writes Carey.
Instead, forecasters draw on expertise from diverse but relevant areas — in the case of finding a submarine, say, submarine command, ocean salvage, and oceanography experts, as well as physicists and engineers. Each would make an educated guess as to where the ship is, based on different scenarios: the sub was attacked; a torpedo activated onboard; a battery exploded. Craven's work was instrumental in the Navy's search for the missing hydrogen bomb that had been lost in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain in 1966 and this is how Craven located the Scorpion. "I knew these guys and I gave probability scores to each scenario they came up with," says Craven. The men bet bottles of Chivas Regal to keep matters interesting, and after some statistical analysis, Craven zeroed in on a point about 400 miles from the Azores, near the Sargasso Sea. The sub was found about 200 yards away.
In the case of the downed Malaysian plane, forecasters might bring in climate and ocean scientists, engineers who worked on building the plane's components and commercial pilots familiar with the route. Those specialists would then make judgments based on the scenarios already discussed as possible causes for the disappearance of Flight 370: terrorism, pilot error, sudden depressurization and engine failure. Sound-detection technology in and around the Indian Ocean may aid this forecasting. The sound of the airliner's fall — if it hit the water — might already have been picked up by submarines watching each other. "In that case the information would be classified," says former submarine commander Alfred Scott McLare, "and we wouldn't know anything until it was released through back channels somehow.""
Instead, forecasters draw on expertise from diverse but relevant areas — in the case of finding a submarine, say, submarine command, ocean salvage, and oceanography experts, as well as physicists and engineers. Each would make an educated guess as to where the ship is, based on different scenarios: the sub was attacked; a torpedo activated onboard; a battery exploded. Craven's work was instrumental in the Navy's search for the missing hydrogen bomb that had been lost in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain in 1966 and this is how Craven located the Scorpion. "I knew these guys and I gave probability scores to each scenario they came up with," says Craven. The men bet bottles of Chivas Regal to keep matters interesting, and after some statistical analysis, Craven zeroed in on a point about 400 miles from the Azores, near the Sargasso Sea. The sub was found about 200 yards away.
In the case of the downed Malaysian plane, forecasters might bring in climate and ocean scientists, engineers who worked on building the plane's components and commercial pilots familiar with the route. Those specialists would then make judgments based on the scenarios already discussed as possible causes for the disappearance of Flight 370: terrorism, pilot error, sudden depressurization and engine failure. Sound-detection technology in and around the Indian Ocean may aid this forecasting. The sound of the airliner's fall — if it hit the water — might already have been picked up by submarines watching each other. "In that case the information would be classified," says former submarine commander Alfred Scott McLare, "and we wouldn't know anything until it was released through back channels somehow.""
Navy guys will need more data.
Those much hyped arcs from Inmarsat are pretty much bogus. The trouble is that the problem is badly conditioned - because satellite is way too far (geosynchonous orbit - not your friendly neighborhood gps) and it's right on top of the search area. In other words - small errors in time/distance measurements, satellite position, etc. produce huge errors in estimation. They're lucky they placed the airplane on earth.
I typed out many different things before realizing they were all instruction manuals on how to do bad things. All I'll leave you with is that the passenger's and flight attendant's oxygen supply will run out long before the cockpit crew's, as it's only meant to be used long enough for the aircraft to perform an emergency descent to an altitude where supplemental O2 isn't necessary. And it's also possible to intentionally depressurize an airliner in-flight from the cockpit if you know which switches to flip and buttons to push. Then fly extra-high (maybe just a touch above the service ceiling on a much-lighter-than-max-gross-weight aircraft, no problem at all) and the time of useful consciousness (without supplemental O2) drops to mere seconds. The "death zone" mountain climbers talk about is above 26,000 feet, and 45,000 is certainly well above that.
After each search result comes in, you recompute and find the next best place to search.
davecb@spamcop.net
The plane was stolen. Forget about failures that there are no reason to think happened, about explosions or mechanical failures, about suicides or searching the ocean for debris. Just figure out where a stolen 777 was taken and you'll find the plane.
Why would you steal a passenger aircraft carrying 230+ passengers and crew when you could steal a cargo-configured 777 or 747 with a crew of maybe 4? A passenger aircraft carries a lot more media attention: compare the coverage of the cargo 747 that crashed coming out of Bagram last year versus the plane that crashed recently in SFO. Plus, do you think all of these ships and planes looking for 370 would have been mobilized had the plane been a cargo aircraft? Probably not. To me, it seems more probable that this was a suicide by one of the pilots rather than a hijacking.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Nope. That NYT piece seems to have forgotten about the initial statement from Malaysia Airlines, which said the last time of contact with flight 370 was at 2:40am:
https://www.facebook.com/my.ma...
That was before the Malaysian authorities went into full denial mode and claimed last contact was at 01:20am. The 02:40 time was inconsistent with their estimated "crash site" in the Gulf of Thailand, which was one of the initial sources of confusion. However, 02:40am turned out to be the exact time of last military radar contact which they were forced to confirm more than 5 days later. Additionally, there were the "small" details that two transponder systems were turned off one after another more than 10 minutes apart, and that the ACARS system was turned off before the last voice contact with the pilots.
In order to fit all these facts into a theory of stupidity, you'd have to accept that: 1. an unidentified flying object the size of a 777 can just fly across the width of Malaysian airspace (more than 1 hour of flight time) at cruising altitude without being noticed by the Malaysian military 2. that 02:40am time from Malaysian Airline's initial statement just turned out to match the time of last military radar contact by complete coincidence 3. nobody noticed the time descrepancies between the two transponder systems turning off.
This is clearly beyond the realm of incompetance, and can only be explained with a touch of malice. The Malaysian authorities knew from the beginning what was going on, but was more concerned with the possible liabilities and damages to their "image" resulting from a rogue pilot, than with actually finding the plane. With wanton disregard for the 239 lives on board and their relatives on the ground, they knowingly misled the international community on a wild witch hunt across the Gulf of Thailand, delaying the search for at least five crucial days, thereby eliminating any possiblity of finding survivors (if the plane had ultimately crashed), and quite possibly lowering the likelihood of finding the cockpit recorders to near zero.