We are sending one ship into the Indian Ocean.
Since the area to be searched there is huge, my gut tells me that our submarines have picked up the pinging of the black boxes and are directing where the USS Kidd should head to, in order to search for surface debris.
With our global spy satellite system, there is no way we do not know where this plane went, where it is, and even what was said in radio transmissions.
The way this investigation is unfolding suggests that many governments are playing a waiting game, and not revealing what they know until they absolutely have to.
If we are now saying the Indian Ocean is the target area, it is because we are calling everyone else’s bluff on the intelligence they have offered to date—Malaysians, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.
There has not been one piece of reliable information about this plane in over six days—except that it did not reach its destination.
Best summary of the event that I have read, kudos!
My first theory was that they had flown the jet to the Philippines, but it seems they didn’t have enough fuel for that so obviously that was out.
The Indian Ocean didn’t seem likely, because they couldn’t land on Diego Garcia and the station there would probably have noticed something if they flew by...but maybe the station did notice something and it’s just possible to investigate it now.
One of the problems with this is not only all the little, lax-security countries (such as Malaysia) doing CYA, but the Chinese, who do not want anybody near their territory and seem to have not been cooperating at all, even though most of the passengers were Chinese.
However, the issue is the fuel. If they had only enough to go to Beijing, they couldn’t have gotten to the Philippines (in one direction) or much past Diego Garcia (in the other). But if they had more fuel, for one reason or another, then there are all sorts of destinations within range.
The Indian Ocean seems like a logical pass-through point, since they could access places like Somalia and other failed-state areas where they could easily land the plane. Well, not easily, because any runway they had built would probably not be exactly easy to land on. But the pirates from this area have kidnapped lots of people with construction skills, so perhaps they made their slave labor build a giant runway.
If you did know the plane was taken by terrorists, you would be putting out disinformation to make them believe you were confused and looking in all the wrong places. Also if the passengers were hostages and you knew their general location, you would want time to gather more information in order to put together a rescue mission.
I agree...our SIGINT folks are top notch. You cannot make a 777 disappear...it is impossible nowadays. Still...what are the odds that they will be able to recover the black boxes and figure this out. If it was me, I would make the Malaysians or the chinks pay for the recovery which will involve deep dives. What are the odds that they’ll volutarily do that after all the cluelessness?
“With our global spy satellite system, there is no way we do not know where this plane went, where it is, and even what was said in radio transmissions.”
That’s a crock of hopium right there. Some passengers’ phones were on until Monday which means the NSA could easily tap into them and find out exactly where the aircraft went since GPS is standard in cellphones these days.
They could turn on their cameras and mics to see what they could learn, too.
“There has not been one piece of reliable information about this plane in over six days—except that it did not reach its destination.”
If the cell phones stayed on until Monday the aircraft did land somewhere.