The k2p blog

It looks like MH17 with 295 passengers and crew has been shot down over eastern Ukraine near the Russian border.

By the Russians? Unlikely.

By Russian-leaning rebels? possibly with a Russian ground to air missile.

By the Ukrainians? by air-to-air or ground-to-air missiles? Not unthinkable.

In the meantime commercial airlines are now avoiding this airspace as – for example – Thai Airways TG921 and others are just doing. There seem to be many aircraft avoiding the area right now.

TG921 and commercial airlines avoiding eastern Ukraine

Considering the number of commercial aircraft in the area, it is particularly poignant that after MH370, it is another Malaysian airliner which has been shot down. And MH370 itself disappeared due to hostile action.

It has now been over 3 months since MH370 vanished without trace.

My theory from two months ago about the disappearance was that this was a deliberate, probably state-sponsored, very well executed and successful  action to prevent certain technology, some sensitive hardware and some particular technical people from reaching Beijing.

There were 20 Chinese software experts on board. They had been working for Freescale Technology in Texas on technology which could convert ordinary aircraft into “stealth” aircraft. Patents had been applied for but have not yet been granted. MH 370 was carrying a “large” package as a Chinese diplomatic package and was therefore not subject to any search or security procedures. The speculative, uncorroborated but plausible and most parsimonious explanation becomes:

1. The Chinese software engineers “stole” technology on behalf of the Chinese government from Freescale.
2. Freescale was slow in picking up the theft and alerting the authorities.
3. US intelligence and security agencies were unable to prevent the engineers and their package from reaching Malaysia.
4. They were also unable to prevent the engineers boarding MH370 bound for Beijing or the precious cargo from being loaded as diplomatic cargo.
5. The operational arm of a US Security Agency took the decision – without recourse to their political masters – to prevent the engineers and their cargo from reaching Beijing, at any cost.
6. ………. 

It is now reported in this “NextNews” video that the patent in question was granted 4 days after the flight disappeared!! The patent was in the names of 4 Chinese engineers and their employer Freescale which happens to be owned by Rothschild. All the 4 inventors of record were on board and with their deaths all the patent rights now revert to the company. While this report implies a financial motive, I don’t think that holds. In corporate patents all the exploitation rights are usually with the corporate entity and not with the individual inventors. The individual inventors may have had some little share in any eventual revenues but these would have been (relatively) quite small. What was actually achieved was that none of the inventors or their cargo or the knowledge in their heads reached Beijing. And that remains the most likely motive. The timing of the granting of the patent – 4 days later – when there could no longer be any question of ownership is also suggestive.

It still seems to me that the most parsimonious explanation for the vanishing is that somebody wanted to prevent the Freescale engineers and their diplomatically protected cargo  from reaching Beijing. They succeeded completely and also in obliterating all traces of their actions. All the other deaths were merely collateral damage.

 h/t: Nessan

On Saturday it is three months since MH370 vanished. It is becoming just a historical footnote as the search efforts are gradually wound-down. Still nothing – not a scrap – has been found and the mystery continues. And now Australia – as the lead country – is going to outsource the search. But they are clearly not expecting anything to be found; “The intensified search will begin in August 2014 and is expected to take up to 12 months, depending on weather conditions”.

Any theory which cannot be disproved, no matter how implausible – remains possible. But I have seen nothing to shift from my view that the plane was deliberately destroyed and “disappeared”.

In the tender documents the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB)  calls for a search area which will be around 60,000 sq. km  and the contractor has to submit plans for searching 5,000 sq. km every 25 days.

The ATSB has issued a press release:

Engaged as a prime contractor, the company will provide the expertise, equipment and vessel(s) necessary to undertake an intensified underwater search for the missing Boeing 777 aircraft in the defined zone in the southern Indian Ocean.

While the precise search zone is currently being established by an international search strategy working group, it is expected that the successful tenderer will search an area up to 60,000 square kilometres based on the ‘seventh handshake’ arc where the aircraft last communicated with the Inmarsat satellite. Definition of the search zone will be finalised within two to three weeks.

The successful tenderer will localise, positively identify and map the debris field of MH370 using specialist equipment such as towed and autonomous underwater vehicles with mounted sonar and/or optical imaging systems.

The intensified search will begin in August 2014 and is expected to take up to 12 months, depending on weather conditions. The successful tenderer will use the data from a bathymetric survey (already underway) to navigate the search zone, which has water depth between 1000 and 6000 metres.

The search vessel(s) used by the prime contractor may also be coordinated with other vessels also undertaking search activities in the search zone on behalf of other countries. …….. 

At the request of the Malaysian Government, the ATSB is leading the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

This request for tender has now appeared for tenders to be submitted by the end of June.

Request for Tender for Provision for Services relating to the Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

On 8 March 2014, a Boeing 777 aircraft, operated as Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers, disappeared during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Through the analysis of available satellite, radar and other data, it has been determined that MH370 is likely to be in the southern Indian Ocean within Australia’s search and rescue zone.

In accordance with Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Malaysia, as the State of registry for the aircraft, is the State conducting the investigation into the occurence involving the disappearance of MH370. In accordance with the provisions of Annex 13, Australia as the State closest to the likley location of MH370, has offered its continuing assistance.

It has been decided between Malaysia and Australia, that Australia will lead the search for MH370.  This arrangement includes Australia contracting the commercial services required to undertake the search operation.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is the Australian agency responsible for the seafloor search.  The ATSB is seeking to contract services to:

• search for and locate MH370 within a defined search area on the seafloor; and
• if located, map and obtain optical imaging of MH370. 

How quickly we forget!  Or is it that what we can’t explain we don’t want to think about.

Ten weeks now.

Still nothing.

The headlines have gone. The relatives still know nothing and are struggling to find closure. The Malaysian government wants to draw a line now and move on. Death certificates have been / are being issued. Malaysian Airlines losses have increased sharply. The discussion is shifting to how to ensure live tracking and preventing this happening again.

But preventing WHAT from happening again?

When there is no plausible explanation, the implausible is no longer implausible. In fact, some implausible explanation now becomes certain.

The latest implausible suggestion now is that the plane was accidentally shot down in the South China Sea by US/Thai jets and everything subsequently was disinformation to cover that up:

Daily Mail: Cawthorne makes the incredible assertion that the plane was shot down accidentally over the South China Sea by a joint US-Thai joint strike fighter team, and the searchers sent in the wrong direction as part of a cover up.

He describes how a man, while working on an oil rig in the ocean at about the same time the plane’s transponder went off, saw a burning plane and how this was right near the military exercise being conducted with personel from various other countries.

He claims that these countries may have then sent searchers in the wrong direction in order to cover their tracks.

‘After all, no wreckage has been found in the South Indian Ocean, which in itself is suspicious.’

But I am sticking with the most plausible implausibility that the plane was deliberately destroyed and “disappeared” to prevent certain cargo and certain passengers from reaching Beijing. That control over the flight was exercised remotely, that the crew and passengers were incapacitated by the excursion to 45,000 feet and the plane then sent on a flight to nowhere to disappear in as intact a manner as possible.

Maybe we will never know.

But somebody does.

The Malaysian government has on 1st May released its preliminary report on the disappearance of MH370. The report is remarkably short (just 5 pages), raises more questions than it answers and could be heavily “laundered”. The material released includes:

1. a Malaysia Air Accident Investigation Bureau report dated April 9th: MH370 Preliminary Report
2. Cargo manifest: MH370 Cargo Manifest and Airway Bill
3. audio recordings of the cockpit conversations with air traffic control
4. a passenger seating plan

but more questions are raised than are answered.

• It took almost 4 hours after the last voice contact for the alarm to be raised.
• When search and rescue was called for the military were not brought into the loop.
• The Military ignored what they apparently did pick up on radar but classified as being “friendly”.
• The cargo contained over 2 tons (2453 kgs) of “lithium-ion batteries” (p. 5 of the cargo manifest). How was this possible when lithium-ion batteries were only to be carried on cargo planes?:

Boeing on-transport-of-lithium-batteries 042013

On January 1, 2013, changes to ICAO’s rules associated with transporting lithium batteries by air came into effect. These changes, intended to further enhance safe carriage, include required training for shippers; compliance checks prior to loading and stowage of lithium batteries aboard airplanes; and pilot notification of the presence, location, and quantity of most lithium battery shipments aboard the
airplanes. . ….
On February 13, 2013, ICAO issued a fast track amendment to the technical instructions to rescind permission allowing lithium ion airplane batteries up to 35kg to be shipped on passenger airplanes This amendment will restrict air transport of lithium ion airplane batteries to cargo-only airplanes. Boeing and its suppliers were already in compliance with this standard. The technical instructions which had become effective on January 1, 2013 allowed airline operators the flexibility to transport lithium ion airplane batteries on either passenger or cargo-only airplanes.

• The cargo also carried a large amount of “fresh mangosteens” but these were out of season.
• Some NBC audio experts have found that the audio released has been “edited”

Analysts who listened to the recordings for NBC News did not know why they were edited, but discovered at least four clear breaks in the audio that indicated edits.

The report is silent on most things. Were the passengers incapacitated due to the height excursion? Was there a height excursion? There is nothing in the material released to contradict the speculation that this was a deliberate act to prevent some passengers and some cargo from ever reaching Beijing.

Malaysian Insider: 

1. Why didn’t the DCA or the Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control Centre inform the Malaysian military that the MAS passenger jet was missing after it received a query from the Ho Chi Minh air traffic control?

2. Why the four-hour gap before initiating the search and rescue? Was it due to waiting for Malaysia Airlines to confirm that the plane was indeed missing?

3. Why the confusion that it was in Cambodian air space? Was that mystery ever solved?

4. Why did the military radar operator categorise an aircraft, now believed to be flight MH370, as a friendly aircraft as it travelled in a westerly direction that Saturday morning?

5. Did the military radar operator check with DCA or civilian air traffic controllers before designating that mystery aircraft as friendly?

6. Why did the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) deny and then confirm a report that it believed the aircraft did an “air turn back” when Hishammuddin’s statement last night clearly showed the authorities were aware of an aircraft making a turn-back?

…. But the five-page preliminary report issued last night is scant on such details.

Global television news channel CNN reported last night that the equivalent preliminary report on Air France 447 was 128 pages long. “That report, produced by France’s aviation safety agency just one month after the plane went missing in 2009, offered specific details on communication between various air traffic control centres.

“Flight 447 was found more than a year later in the Atlantic Ocean; all 228 people on board had died,” CNN reported.

It also said that a preliminary report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau into the Qantas engine explosion in 2010 ran more than 40 pages, including diagrams and charts. 

It was 7 weeks yesterday since MH370 vanished with all its crew passengers and cargo.

Barack Obama is visiting Malaysia – the first visit by a sitting US President for over 50 years. He has expressed “solidarity” with Malaysia regarding MH370 – whatever that entails.

Since I left Malaysia on 8th April – one month after the vanishing act – nothing further has emerged. There is still no trace of anything. No debris at all. No bits and pieces gradually making their way to the surface. No passenger effects or luggage washed up anywhere. As if everything and everybody had been vaporised.

The behaviour of the Malaysian Air Force in ignoring the aircraft while flying back over Malaysian airspace and which was picked up by military radar is still to be explained.

Searches are continuing under water, in an area of the Indian Ocean which has been calculated to be its final position. The handshake radio pings from the ACARS system on board when communicating to a wobbly Inmarsat satellite contained no location or direction of flight information.  Those are being inferred from an analysis of the Doppler variations caused by the satellite’s wobble. A method being used for the first time and unproven. The probability that this calculation method is in error and may even be invalid is not insignificant.

Malaysiakini: Family members of MH370’s passengers have expressed doubt on the analysis of Inmarsat data that Prime Minister Najib Razak relied on to declare, some say with questionable haste, that the plane had “ended in the southern Indian Ocean”.

But what is known is that the aircraft spent 23 minutes at 45,000 feet and then descended rapidly to 23,000 feet. The passengers (and crew?) being incapacitated by hypoxia is highly probable. At most the oxygen masks could have provided 12 minutes of oxygen – perhaps less. A lack of oxygen for this long a time (11+ minutes) would have led not only to unconsciousness (after 4 or 5 minutes) but a permanent and irreversible coma. It is not unreasonable to suppose that all passengers and most of the crew were already dead or in an irreversible coma just over an hour into the flight, by the time the plane descended to 23,000 feet. It remains faintly possible that the pilot(s) were conscious at this time but if the plane was under remote control at this time then they too would likely have been fatally incapacitated.

But I note that there is nothing emerging about the cargo. Or about the software engineers on board.

Malaysiakini: MH370’s cargo manifest remains a secret, and its contents are unknown besides disclosure of an uncharacteristically large shipment of mangosteens, which are not in season in March, and potentially hazardous lithium-ion batteries …

A terrorist hijack with no subsequent publicity or claims makes no sense. The return to 23,000 feet and the continued “stealth” flight for several hours to “nowhere” makes “pilot suicide” highly unlikely. And that leaves a deliberate act – by persons or agencies unknown – to first eliminate all the passengers and crew and then a flight to get rid of some very sensitive cargo, the entire plane and all evidence in a remote and inaccessible place.

But it was no accident.