[Peetwo]

Agenda Item 4: - HERE - Asia/Pacific and inter-regional SAR planning, coordination and cooperation: released by the ICAO in January 2015 is as close to official sanity as we are likely to get and it is worthy of consideration.  Two parts of this report have been carefully examined by SAR savvy associates; the questions they raised in January, still valid today were not worth pursuing – publicly – until the May deadline, to give the full benefit of doubt to the JRCC et al.

JRCC Drift Planning.

2.18 JRCC Australia uses its own custom designed drift modelling program called Net Water Movement (NWM). For conventional searches, this program has proved a valuable asset to search planning. Results from NWM are validated and compared against another proprietary drift modelling program and also validated as soon as possible through the deployment of Self Locating Datum Marker Buoys (SLDMBs). The SLDMBs are floating devices fitted with a GPS receiver and Iridium satellite transmitter which provide water current and sea temperature information and may be deployed by aircraft or vessels. The buoys transmit their position and sea temperature regularly directly to JRCC Australia. 33 SLDMBs were deployed in this search.

2.19 Due to the magnitude of the MH370 search areas, and taking into account the lessons learned during the previous search for Air France AF447 of 2009, a drift planning working group was established to supplement standard JRCC Australia drift planning methods. Its purpose was to ensure that international best methodology and consensus drift modelling techniques were applied to the MH370 search areas with the primary aims of:

    a) Providing the best possible area to locate floating debris

    b) Provide the ability to conduct “Reverse” drift backwards to provide an estimated splash point, should debris from the aircraft be located.

I do have one question – Where, precisely are our 'Slam Dams' now please?

Excellent timing Old Tom with less than a week till the end of May and only two days till the ATSB fronts the RRAT Committee at Budget Estimates...

Caught this comment from Simon Gunson off the PT article - MH370 search part 2 nears end but is the answer in KL not Indian Ocean:

I have little appetite generally for conspiracy theories however if one can’t see conspiracy written all over it in the MH370 saga, then one just isn’t looking.


Unfortunately this conclusion is discredited not by the facts themselves, but more so by the rich fertile soil giving birth to so many lunatic assessments.

Just one example. ATSB had a prediction that debris from MH370 occurring from an impact along the 7th Arc would deposit on the west coast of Sumatra after 123 days or about 9th July 2014.

When that did not happen they should have then concluded there was something wrong in their own assumptions, but what did they actually do?

Instead of reviewing those assumptions investigators contracted a bathymetric survey to continue what they must have realised by then was just a charade to pretend they were looking for MH370.

The ATSB has dismissed all other conclusions and a raft of other evidence in dogged determination to prove just one theory, which they themselves have now disproven.

 
Now from the Gunson's webpage here it is quite obvious that he has spent some considerable time & effort analysing all available data on the possible drift pattern for any MH370 debris in the current SIO search area. 

"..On 27 March the JIT team in Malaysia headed by MAS pilot Lim Jit Koon and senior civil aviation official Ahmad Nizar Zolfakar demanded that the JACC abandon efforts to recover or examine objects from that debris field and shift the search north..."

The above quote highlights the major issue with the current ATSB drift modelling program (being flawed) when we all know the visual air search was bizarrely abandoned prior to full verification of all satellite spotted possible debris targets. 

Another slightly less major issue with the NWM is that it is based on finding debris that you can reverse drift analysis to narrow down/refine a search area. This methodology is moot if you can't find any debris in the first place.

However by definition we already have a defined ATSB - best guess - search area so why wouldn't they use the available technology (i.e. SLDMBs) to help verify/increase the probability that this 'best guess' is in fact where MH370 now lies??

Although I can't find any record, maybe this has occurred and the Fugro ships have been  dispersing SLDMBs along the length of the 7th arc ATSB search area. Hopefully this also occurred again on or close to the anniversary of the MH370 disappearance and on the same tidal cycle for the estimated splashdown/water impact of MH370.

In terms of cost I would have thought - when you consider the bucket of money so far - that this would be a small outlay in the grand scheme of things. The information derived from such an exercise would not be wasted and would be invaluable for any future SAR missions carried out in the SIO.

If this exercise did occur I cannot see why this information is not on the public record? If it didn't occur - why not? To give no explanation lends more to the growing view (see Gunson quote above) that the whole ATSB SIO is merely an expensive charade to appease the NOK and the greater world human interest at large.

MTF..P2