[ventus45]

Dong Hai Jiu 101 has departed Fremantle to transit to the calibration range where the towfish will be trialed. It will then return to Fremantle to land personnel embarked only for the trials, before departing around 18 February for the first of three swings in the search area.

Interesting.
Only three swings already decided ?  Defined "target" list, check, if empty, finito !

I like this bit:
 ............ return to Fremantle to land personnel embarked only for the trials .......

Could it mean, that all non-chinese crew will be "landed ashore" before the ship deploys ?
"Security" might be an issue perhaps ?

Perhaps it's time to re-read Ben's original article, with my comment from this morning.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/...ment-38174

{P2 edit: Here you go "V"... }

So, THREE – and ONLY three swings = trips = deployments.

I think we can assume from this, that the answer to part (1) above, is that the ship has been tasked with a defined list of “difficult sites” to check out, which will take three trips total, and when completed, project finishes, ie, will be wound up, at least as far as Australia’s ATSB, and MALAYSIA is concerned.

Presumably, at that point, the “agreements” in the ATSB document () lapse. Then, presumably, all three countries are “released” from any need or reason to “co-operate”, hence, China, if it so chose, could continue, with it’s own independent search, if it wanted to, and would be under no obligation whatsoever to tell anybody anything, even if they later found it.

Given China’s attitude to the search for the last eighteen months, it is pretty clear that they have been absent because they believe they were being ignored and lied to. With that as the background, it would be highly unlikely that the Chinese would “give” Malaysia or Australia the proverbial “time of day” if they did later find it outside the 120,000 square kilometre zone themselves.

Indeed, they may choose to keep any find a state secret, so that they could later marshal their own recovery assets in secret, and do a recovery under cover of a “fishing fleet” or similar, and “exclude” all other parties, regardless of what the UN, ICAO, or anyone else said about it. That would be very interesting, politically.

So, now the question becomes, what will the Dong Hai Jiu 101 do after July 2016 ? Will it return to China ? OR Will we get an answer to part (2) of my original post above ?

&..

2
Ventus45

Posted January 30, 2016 at 1:04 pm | Permalink

The Chinese abruptly abandoned all search activities for MH-370 when the JACC/ATSB took over from AMSA.

Since then, the Chinese attitude to the JACC/ATSB search could best be described as one of “studied indifference”.

So, one must ask, what motive could the Chinese now have for their apparent renewed interest in MH-370 ?

Will the Chinese join the ATSB search, perhaps using their “better SAS kit” for looking into those “difficult sites” that the ATSB has “mentioned in passing” at different times, or will the Chinese conduct their own “entirely independent” search ?

If the later, it will be interesting to see “where” they search.

That could be “telling”, specifically as to who knows “what’s what”, in the intel world.