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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.
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
Airplane parts without a paper trail are, more or less, worthless.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
In theory yes, in real life no. There is quite a huge black market for spare parts.
the passengers however, was probably killed when they climbed to 45.000 feet
The official service ceiling is 43,100 ft. So you can be darn sure that 45000 ft (44000 in the most detailed reports) is not going to kill anybody. You do know the cabin is pressurized, right?
damned thing can easily be disguised as civilian traffic and can fly around the world and place it where ever they want...
Not without turning on a transponder. And while you can obviously fly over Malaysia without one and not raise an eyebrow, getting over Western countries without a transponder might prove more difficult. Somebody doesn't just peek up from the ground and say, "ah, gee, looks civilian, let it pass." They actually see it on radar, and most countries will scramble fighters and intercept something large that doesn't have a transponder, or isn't scheduled to be in the area. They then fly close and identify markings. They fly close enough to see faces in the windows when they're doing an escort. An empty plane with no transponder is going to get shot down. So it is substantially more complicated.
There was at least 1 fairly high level American business exec on the flight. There is significant hostage value there. If they are religious nuts they probably don't care the slightest bit what the "value" in dollars of the airplane is, they care about the propaganda value.
If the incentive was financial, (highly unlikely) the parts value of the plane is very low, or zero, but the whole plane has significant value as an AWACS type of platform for a smaller country. And while selling parts would be problematic, buying them might not be. 30 years ago, maybe. Not now.
If they were going to use it as a bomb, the most realistic targets would be India, or a US military base somewhere where they don't control the airspace.
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.
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