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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.""
Some of the earlier "finds" referenced in this article had a lot more evidence and a lot less of a geographic area. I think right now the flight is determined without a doubt to be "somewhere in asia, maybe." It was maybe being flown by a pilot but maybe by hijackers. It was maybe flying for 0 more hours after it last checked in or maybe 5 or maybe something in the middle and at a unknown speed.
They have about the same odds of finding it on the moon as they do at any particular geographic point with the current level of evidence. So what they need is more evidence, not just a really good search team from the Navy.
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.
We've seen maps of where MH770 could be based on the angle of last ping received from the engines. Here's one: http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/03/16/world/asia/16flight-map/16flight-map-superJumbo.jpg
We have a Last Known Position (indicated on that map). We know how fast 777s can fly. If we had the ping arc data as shown in red on the above map for every ping received, we could determine MH770's course, and narrow down where it ended up significantly.
The following numbers are wrong, but a concrete example is easier to follow. Say the first ping occurs 15 minutes after the Last Known Position, and we think the 777 is flying at 500 mph. Set your compass for 125 miles (scale), put the pointy end on the last known position, and draw a circle. That circle will intersect the First Ping Arc in two places (we hope). If it doesn't, we need to rethink assumptions. Anyway, the plane was in one of those positions (more or less) at the time of tyhe first ping.
Do it again for the second ping arc. And again. Some of these potential courses will make no sense and no longer need to be followed. With any luck. though, there will emerge a Most Probably Course for the aircraft.
It may be necessary to rerun this analysis for different speeds - if MH770 was flying low to avoid radar it would travel more slowly. Do it. Hell, throw the entire problem to a computer and let if grind out possibilities.
Has the satellite angle data, or the location arcs at particular ping times, been released? Can it be released?
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.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They mention looking at the causes "terrorism, pilot error, sudden depressurization and engine failure" to estimate likely search locations. Of course, that's true.. But, if the cause is a rogue pilot who doesn't want to be found (as evidenced by the manual disabling of communications) things get tough really quick.
I guess at that point you're working with the fuel radius and removing areas covered by some form of tracking that would have definitely detected them.
The Malaysian military radar showed an unidentified plane without a flight plan fly across their country and over the Indian Ocean. The radar operators didn't notice it. So they missed the opportunity to send up fighter jets to find out what the fuck was going on.
Instead they were were searching the wrong sea, on the east of Malaysia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03...
Series of Errors by Malaysia Mounts, Complicating the Task of Finding Flight 370
By KEITH BRADSHER and MICHAEL FORSYTHE
MARCH 15, 2014
US investigators are interested in the Southern ping arc because radar installations along the Northern arc would be hard to evade though some mention is now made of traversing Myanmar on the Northern arc. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03... However, in the graphic, an envelope of 1 hour flight distance is shown for each arc. The envelopes for the North and South arcs don't overlap. In fact it looks like it would take three hours to get from one arc to the other. Drawing radii from the arc ends to the satellite position, it looks like you'd have to get to Sri Lanka before the arc ends are within an hour's travel distance. But, news reports indicate detection of hourly pings. If similar arcs are associated with the other pings, then there may never be time to jump from one arc to the other if they are never consistent with a position near Sri Lanka, so the Southern arc might be excluded on geometric grounds.
Not so fast. The Scorpion was found because the U.S. had an extensive underwater listening array in the Atlantic (SOSUS) designed specifically to (wait for it...) locate and track submarines. Soviet submarines, but it worked equally well on U.S. submarines which were making a lot of noise - like one in its death throes from an onboard explosion and imploding as it passed crush depth. One of their first clues that something disastrous had happened was when those sounds showed up on SOSUS audio tapes.
Yes the same methodology can (and should) be applied inn locating MH370. But we're talking about uncertainties in location and time an order or three in magnitude larger than for the Scorpion or AF447.
Have gnu, will travel.
If there was a reason to search for it, they would. There is none. The question about Flight 19 is, why did it happen, and how to prevent it? That is all understood now. You don't let some hotshot look out his window and fly by the seat of his pants guessing at unlikely locations, when his subordinates knew where they were. Finding the crashed airplanes is meaningless; the crews are all dead and there was no sensitive cargo.
Don't waste time speculating on a motive. It doesn't prove anything and does not find the plane.
Don't waste time speculating on who. It is on;y speculation and does not find the plane.
Focus on determining where the plane went, where it is and how it is being hidden. That will lead to the other answers.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The delays in turning off the transponder and the data stream to the modem, flying between way points on a well known path etc might be explained by confused and disabled pilots too.
Hypoxia can set in as little as 90 seconds of oxygen deprivation and will severely incapacitate and confuse people. Cabin pressure loss is the most common theory for hypoxia. But cabin pressure loss would deploy oxygen masks, sound alarms and the pilot would have been alert in the first few seconds to declare emergency and radio out. The captain seems to be nerd with home made flight simulator, he would have reacted correctly to oxygen masks dropping from the ceilings.
Carbon monoxide is a way for hypoxia to set in. If there was a slow smoldering fire in the cockpit, not hot enough to trigger fire alarms it could result in incapacitated confused pilots. Again there are CO detectors, and warnings and associated with it.
I am not sure how regularly these systems that detect cabin pressure loss and CO detectors are tested. It is quite expensive to actually deploy all those oxygen masks. So even the regular testing protocol would require the maintenance crew to disable the actual deployment of the oxygen masks and test the detection and deployment signals. They could forget to turn them back on, like the did in the Helios flight disaster I mentioned in another thread. CO detector is chemical based. They have to be replaced regularly and this is an old plane.
Once the pilots flip switches on and off in confused state lose their consciousness completely, the plane would fly on autopilot following the way points that happened to be programmed.
If there is foul play involved, it would be worthwhile exercise to make sure every flight plan that was file in that duration and every flight directed by the control towers in that time is legit and locate those planes. The pilot(s) could easily turn off the transponder, drop out of radar, pop back in and start using a different call sign. Without a transponder, air traffic control completely trusts the pilot to self identify the plane correctly. If the malefactors had filed a fake flight plan, the plane could change its identity mid flight without attracting attention.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1 The last fix from Inmarsat gave a Line of Position (LOP) which is a very broad arc.
They had a ping every hour, each of which should have resulted in an LOP.
Is there a way to combine these LOP's to get a better idea of the flight path?
(Old school marine folks would walk the old LOP's forward in time and combine them.)
One would have to guess a direction and speed to do this which makes the logic somewhat circular.
Still, there should be more information in the rest of the LOP's.
2) Who benefits from all this?
This has focused attention on the flight and not on what's happening in with Russia.
This seems an unlikely motivation, but it is a definite consequence.
I certainly hope this is not the motivation behind this.