[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 27.12.16: MH370 a cover-up or balls-up? 

In the above video the Heff, in his typical indefatigable style, calls out Beaker on the PelAir cover-up/cock-up.

So to at the start of the ATSB 19 October 2015 Supplementary Estimates, the Heff gives his appraisal of the ATSB led MH370 search:

Australian Transport Safety Bureau
[18:22]

CHAIR: I think generally you may face some questions about the MH370 stuff-up.

Senator JOHNSTON: Mr Dolan, could you very briefly tell us what we are doing as of right now?

Mr Dolan : At the moment we have two vessels with deep tow equipment in the Indian Ocean or en route to continue the search of the surface in the defined area for this event...

  It is often quoted..

"..If I had to choose between a cock-up and a conspiracy, I'd choose a cock-up every time.."

In the case of MH370 the Jury is still firmly out but "V" would appear to be favouring a conspiracy on a grand scale: 

K

The only logical explanation, is that there is most definitely something of critical international importance to hide.  All the "involved" Governments clearly know what it is, and are in complete agreement that it must remain secret. The public never will know, because all the involved governments desperately want, and perhaps even "need" it to remain forever secret.

Malaysia was lying from day one, and there was the famous "evidence that must remain sealed" statement.

After the "initial flurry" of the first two weeks, China's attitude for the past 30 plus months has been one of "studied indifference".

After Jay Carney "directed" the search to the SIO, he was quickly "shut up", and unceremoniously disposed of by the US Intelligence insiders, and the NSA classified everything the US has. The US has remained steadfastly "silent".

Australia, as the compliant and obedient lapdog, has dutifully conducted "the search that never was", AKA, "Operation Mincemeat TWO".  

Remember that the the "original" high priority area was only 60,000 square kilometres. When it was clear that the aircraft was highly unlikely to be there, and since public interest was still "high" , they had to "buy more time" for the "heat" to diminish, so we had the "magic doubling" to 120,000 square kilometres, which bought another year for the "heat" to subside.

Now, the "tripartite" governments have "decided" that "enough is enough", the heat has subsided to only "lukewarm", and it is time to end the farce, and simply "wrap it up".

It is interesting that the ATSB is now proposing just "one more small area" to search, clearly against the wishes of our dear Minister Selfie, and clearly knowing that it will not be accepted or acted upon. It can only be a forlorn attempt by the ATSB to recover some small amount of dignity for itself.

You can just hear Hoody at some news conference down the track:- "We wanted to go on, but the government(s) would not let us".

This might invoke the ire of P9, for he has not much time for JW and sees him as a parasite trying to profit off the misery of the MH370 NOK. However there are some thought provoking postings off the JW blog that look over toward the cock-up side of the fence..

First JW OBS:

As a result of the above I would suggest that:

a) Even though most recent report describes “the need to search an additional area representing approximately 25,000 km²,” the conduct of the ATSB’s search does not suggest that they earnestly believe that the plane could lie in this area. If they did, they could have searched out the highest-probability portions of this area with the time and resources at their disposal. Indeed, they could be searching it right now, as I write this. Obviously they are not.
b) The ATSB knew, in issuing the report, that Malaysia and China would not agree to search the newly suggested area, because it fails to meet the agreed-upon criteria for an extension (“credible new information… that can be used to identify the specific location of the aircraft”). Thus mooting this area would allow them to claim that there remained areas of significant probability that they had been forced to leave unsearched. This, in effect, would allow them to claim that their analysis had been correct but that they had fallen victim to bad luck.
c) The ATSB’s sophisticated mathematical analysis of the Inmarsat data, combined with debris drift analysis and other factors, allowed them to define an area of the southern Indian Ocean in which the plane could plausibly have come to rest. A long, exhaustive and expensive search has determined that it is not there.
d) The ATSB did not fall victim to bad luck. On the contrary, they have demonstrated with great robustness that the Inmarsat data is not compatible with the physical facts of the case.
e) Something is wrong with the Inmarsat data.

Then Dennis W on his own blog, reckons the problem lies in our 'expectations'

Saturday, December 24, 2016
 
Is Something Wrong with this Picture (The Search for 9M-MRO) ??

From Forward I page v of "Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370:

Uncertainty is all pervasive—whether it relates to everyday personal choices and actions, or as background to business and policy decisions, or economic and climate predictions. In recent times, few things have attracted as much attention as the uncertainty surrounding the final whereabouts of MH370.

Yes, indeed.

A cadre (and a large cadre at that) of very qualified people have tossed their hat in the uncertainty reduction ring - the SSWG, the DSTG, CSIRO, to name a few. I will refer to this group as the SSI, Search Strategy Insiders. The SSI has representatives from Boeing, Inmarsat, and Thales. Who can claim to know more about the performance characteristics of a 777 aircraft than Boeing? Who can claim to know more about the Inmarsat system than Inmarsat? Who can claim to know more about how the AES functions than Thales?

Additionally the SSI has access to 20 previous flights of 9M-MRO. The data from these 20 previous flights includes the ACARS data, so the SSI knows exactly where the aircraft was located, the ground track of the aircraft, and the fuel consumption relative to these 20 previous flights. Data of this type has never been made available to anyone but the SSI.

From page 27 of "Bayesian Methods..." referring to the BTO calibration/validation:

The data used to construct the histogram and the empirical parameters were obtained from logs of the 20 flights of 9M-MRO prior to the accident flight.

From page 30 of "Bayesian Methods..." referring to the collection of BFO statistics:

Empirical statistics of the residual measurement noise wBFOk were determined using the previous 20 flights of 9M-MRO. Data points corresponding to when the aircraft was climbing or descending were excluded.

The SSI also has access to the radar data, not simply graphics, which has never been put in the public domain. It is fair to say that the SSI has a great deal of information that allows them to test and to refine their modeling. The rest of us have nothing but the Inmarsat logs from the accident flight, so there is no way to validate our own modeling. Still, the terminal locations derived by the SSI are consistent with the terminal locations derived by the rest of us. There is obviously no magic here.

So, what is the take-away? My early conclusion is that the ensemble of data associated with the accident flight is not sufficient to determine a terminus, and so would conclude any other person reasonably skilled in the background analytics. The data can only broadly constrain the possible terminal locations. It cannot constrain terminal locations sufficiently well to have a high degree of confidence in the results of an under water search conducted in a relatively small area.

The only things wrong are our expectations

 
Read, absorb, weep or ridicule, it is still a fascinating point of discussion and no doubt the recriminations/blame game will go on indefinitely...

However provided this is not a monumental conspiracy, none of this academia speculation and theorising will actually get us any closer to finding the final terminus of MH370...


MTF...P2