Posted on 03/19/2014 12:57:10 AM PDT by Brandonmark
A US technology company which had 20 senior staff on board Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had just launched a new electronic warfare gadget for military radar systems in the days before the Boeing 777 went missing.
Freescale Semiconductor, which makes powerful microchips for industries including defence, released the powerful new products to the American market on March 3.
Five days later, Flight MH370 flew from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people including 20 working for Freescale.
Twelve were from Malaysia eight were Chinese nationals.
Freescale’s spokesman Mitch Haws has said: “These were all people with a lot of experience and technical background and they were very important people.
“It’s definitely a loss for the company.”
Freescale’s shareholders include the Carlyle Group of private equity investors whose past advisers have included ex-US president George Bush Sr and former British Prime Minister John Major.
Carlyle’s previous heavyweight clients include the Saudi Binladin Group, the construction firm owned by the family of Osama bin Laden.
The fact that Freescale had so many highly qualified staff on board the Boeing 777 had already prompted wild conspiracy theories about what might have happened.
The company says they were flying to China to improve its consumer products operations, but Freescale’s fresh links to electronic warfare technology is likely to trigger more speculation and deepen the mystery.
Experts have been baffled how a large passenger jet seems to have flown undetected and possibly beaten military radar systems for up to six hours.
Avoiding radar via “cloaking technology” has long been one of the objectives of the defence industry and Freescale has been active developing chips for military radar.
On its website, the company says its radio frequency products meet the requirements for applications in “avionics, radar, communications, missile guidance, electronic warfare and identification friend or foe”.
(Excerpt) Read more at express.co.uk ...
You can't buy advertising like this.
I have been wondering why they were on their way to Beijing.
Must have been for a company picnic..
operations folk?
What company flies 20 senior staff on the same flight?
I read somewhere that they were production workers not engineers.
I ran with this theory on day 3 and a number of freepers shot it down - with good knowledge it seemed.
They were headed to a month long conference and training session. There were 7 more coming who were catching the plane after this one.
Yes sir, nothing to be concerned about having so many foreign nationals working on U.S. defense technology.
Freescale was the old Motorola semiconductor mfg division before it was divested. These folks were probably semiconductor operations/manufacturing types. Doubtful that they had much operational or technical expertise persaye with radar though.
They weren’t senior staff but production engineers.
You just know the Bush's family will be blamed for the missing plane, yep I can see the conspiracy folks going nuts over this information.
Press conference.
Referred to as a search and rescue op.
No left turn prior to “Good night”.
No waypoints entered beyond IGARI to Beijing, the ones for the scheduled flight.
Maldives sighting not true.
There were deletions from the Captain’s home flight simulator, they are working to retrieve them.
*****
I think the waypoints comment applies to before the diversion.
They would not know about waypoints after that, because of ACARS being disabled.
I knew it...Romulan cloaking device.
Well, how about that. China.
Would 20 be needed to pull off something like this?
Apparently, there were more of them following on another flight. Earlier posts, days ago, said they were all Asian, and now I learn that they were attending a conference in Beijing. having attended conferences, this sounds like a bunch of plant and sales execs going to have some fun and a little work.
Yeah this is just sensationalism. Freescale is not a defence firm, they make CPUs and so on that are use in a wide range of products including military. In this part of the world these would be operations/manufacturing people.
Maybe the plan was hacked. Is the control system of these kinds of planes remotely accessible?
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