[Peetwo]

Frog MH370 CI cont:  A Wise man once said -   

Via JW blog:

French MH370 Investigators Eye “Spoof” Scenario

– OCTOBER 31, 2018 POSTED IN: AVIATION



Interest in MH370 revived earlier this month after next-of-kin Ghislain Wattrelos held a press conference at which he revealed that he had been briefed by French judicial authorities about their investigation into the case. As the UK’s Daily Star reported,

Ghyslain Wattrelos lost his wife Laurence, and two teenage children Hadrien and Ambre when Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

Mr Wattrelos today revealed he was told by the French Gendamarie Air Transport (GTA) team investigating the jet’s disappearance they had found “inconsistencies” in the Malaysian investigation’s official report.

He claimed experts are investigating if navigation data from the missing plane could have been hacked to disguise the route it took before crashing into the ocean.
He also said he had been told several “curious passengers” warranted further investigation – including a Malaysian aeronautics expert seated directly beneath the satcom.

This was of course enormously interesting to me, as I had publicly pointed out in early 2015 that if the plane wasn’t in the southern Indian Ocean, the only conceivable explanation was that hijackers outside the cockpit had managed to perpetrate an extremely sophisticated hack of the satcom in order to make the signals seem like they were coming from a plane heading south when it was actually heading north. This idea met with widespread ridicule at the time, as most experts believed that the plane would certainly be found in the southern Indian Ocean where the satcom signals indicated it had flown. Subsequently, of course, it wasn’t–nearly a quarter billion dollars was spent on a seabed search that covered an area the size of the UK but turned up nothing.

At last, it seemed, the authorities were willing to take my idea seriously.

The Daily Star contacted me for a follow-up article:

[Wise] told Daily Star Online: “This (hacking lead) is an interesting development, because it’s exactly what I’ve been talking about for the last five years or so.

“While I haven’t looked at this particular passenger, the core of the argument I’ve been trying to make is that the Satellite Data Unit, or SDU, has a vulnerability that could be exploited to make the plane look like it went south when it really went north.”

He added: “What I pointed out is, are there any way these signals could have been tampered with?

“Is there some way that someone with ill-intent could have changed them?
“The answer is yes, there actually is a way that it’s physically possible that a person could get into the electronics bay, or directly access the data unit from ceiling of the cabin.

“And they could alter either the inputs into the SDU itself in such a way it would look like the plane was going south when it was going north.

“Do we have any reason to believe that’s the case? I would say yes.

“I think the main and most obvious one is having searched the seabed, based on signals of where the plane went, the plane is not there.”

Inmarsat data has led investigators to believe the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean west of Australia after running out of fuel.

But he has urged a re-analysis of this information, claiming that it could in actual fact have flown north instead.

The radius of one of the “handshakes” runs through Kazakhstan.

And Wise holds Russia as a suspect because of the shooting down of MH17 by a Russian military missile, and how the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea fell off the news radar following MH370’s disappearance.

He told us: “What’s the motive? I can tell you this was happening in the context of Russia getting a lot of heat for the annexation of Crimea.

“I was on CNN six times a day, and CNN didn’t talk about Crimea anymore, they only talked about MH370 and so it was possible a diversion, a show of dominance.
“Because if I’m right and Russia did take the plane, they completely fooled, ran circles, the western authorities and experts have been completely bamboozled, with their pants caught down.

“I would say, only one other 777 has ever been lost mid-flight, that was the sistership of MH370.

“It was shot down by an operation carried out by the GRU. If you’re a chicken farmer, and you’ve never lost a chicken in 15 years, then you find one of your chickens murdered, and a week later you see a fox jumping over the fence with a chicken in its mouth, what would you think?

“What would be your primary suspect here? The only known cause of 777s coming to grief.”

All of which I stand by. I think the headline was unfortunately sensationalistic and misleading, however: “Plane ‘HIDDEN in Russian base’ as investigators swoop on new ‘hacking’ lead.” I’ve never said that I thought 9M-MRO is hidden on a Russian, and certainly not in all caps–though I am intrigued by the possibility that the plane might have touched down on the remote airstrip at Yubileyniy within the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

There is some very interesting commentary that follows - see http://jeffwise.net/2018/10/31/french-mh...-scenario/ 

Next I note that Victor Ianello has jumped on the Lion Air JT 610 floating debris field as a tangible link to MH370...

Crash Debris from Lion Air JT610 Provides Clues about MH370

by Victor Iannello

POSTED: SUNDAY, 11/4/2018

Lion Air flight JT610, with 181 passengers and 8 crew, was climbing out of Jakarta on a flight to Pangkal Pinang (Indonesia) when control was lost at around 5,000 ft. Soon after, the Boeing 737-MAX 8 aircraft crashed into the Java Sea northeast of Jakarta. Although we don’t know the cause of the crash, there were some anomalies noted on the previous flight related to sensor disagreements for speed and altitude which required maintenance. Some suspect that these previous issues might have been related to the crash.

Luckily, the flight data recorder (FDR), commonly known as a “black box”, was recovered, and the approximate location is known for the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), the other “black box”, so there is a good probability that the cause of the crash can be determined.

Investigators are now claiming they have recovered 69 hours of data from the FDR, which would be sufficient to analyze JT610 as well as the preceding flight which had the anomalous behavior.

The last ADS-B data that we have from Flightradar24 has the aircraft at an altitude of 425 ft, a groundspeed of about 360 knots, and a descent rate of 30,976 fpm. That translates to an approximate true airspeed of 472 knots and a descent angle of about 40 deg. That suggests the aircraft impacted the sea with very high energy. Similarly, the final BFO values for MH370 suggest a downward acceleration of about 0.7g over 8 seconds, reaching a descent rate of about 15,000 fpm. Unless a pilot was at the controls and skillfully recovered from this descent, MH370 also impacted the sea with high energy. Therefore, the debris produced from the JT610 crash gives us some indication of the types of debris probably produced from the crash of MH370.

Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) is in charge of the rescue and recovery operation for JT610, which is in water about 100 feet deep, with efforts reportedly hampered by strong underwater currents and limited visibility. Already one volunteer diver has lost his life while recovering body parts.

The video at the top shows floating debris for JT610. If the objects shown are truly representative of the main field of floating debris, it is evidence that a high speed impact produces only small floating parts spread over a fairly limited area. Now admittedly, a B777 is considerably larger than a B737, and the floating debris field should be easier to find. However, the surface search for MH370 in the Southern Indian Ocean (SIO) from the air began weeks after the disappearance, and the dispersive effects of waves and currents in the SIO are strong. The combination of a dispersed field and small parts might explain the failure for the air search to detect floating objects along the 7th arc. The small size of the floating parts might also explain why satellite images along the 7th arc have not spotted aircraft debris.

Despite the likelihood of small floating debris, the underwater searchers for MH370 expect to find a fairly substantial debris field (bigger than 100 m) and substantial, distinguishable objects such as the landing gear and engines, consistent with the debris field of Air France 447. This is also consistent with the parts of JT610 that have already been found on the seabed. For instance, the picture below shows an engine and part of the landing gear of JT610.



To locate parts on the seabed, BASARNAS is using a combination of technologies, such as multi-beam echo sounders (MBES), side-scan sonar (SSS), magnetometers, and remotely-operated vehicles (ROV). The SSS technology has been the workhorse for the subsea search of MH370, used in both the towed vehicles and the underwater drones.

The video below shows divers helping to retrieve debris from the seabed.

The debris recovered from the crash of JT610 helps explain why no MH370 floating debris was spotted by air and by satellite along the 7th arc, and why we remain hopeful that it will be detected on the seabed with sonar sensors once the correct search area is selected.

MTF...P2