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Showing posts with label malaysian airlines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label malaysian airlines. Show all posts
The United States' European allies have become "a bunch of weenies" on the world stage, and America should reach out to governments willing to stand up to "evil forces in the world," according to House Foreign Affairs Committee member Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.
In a wide-ranging speech to the Young America Foundation's annual young conservative conference in Washington on Thursday night, the California Republican praised the leadership in India and Australia, for example, but lambasted Europe during a question-and-answer session.
"You know I hate to say this, but I don't think that our European allies are going to be what balances off the evil forces in the world," Rohrabacher said. "The only people I know who seem willing, who seem gutsy enough to fight, are the Poles, and the rest of the Europeans are a bunch of weenies as far as I'm concerned."
Rohrabacher, who during the nearly hourlong speech touted his "cold warrior" background as former President Ronald Reagan's assistant press secretary, urged the United States to make alliances that will stand up to radical Islam and the rise of Communist China.
"My theory is that the allies, the alliance that is going to save the world in your generation's time is going to be an alliance between the United States, India, Japan — and here's the kicker — Russia," he said.
"Russia will be our friend. You're getting that from a guy who, during the Cold War, killed Russians."
He said that despite the shootdown of a Malaysia Airlines jet by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, China is a bigger threat to the United States than Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Putin does some things in Ukraine and everybody is waving their hands but China is committing acts of aggression against the Philippines and against Japan, and nobody says a word," he said.
In a radio interview last year, Rohrabacher said he once lost to Putin in a drunken arm-wrestling match in the early '90s.
We "started arguing about who won the Cold War, etc., and so we decided to settle it like men do when they've had too much to drink in the pub," he told Southern California Public Radio. "So we got into these arm-wrestling matches, and I ended up being paired off with Putin. He's a little guy, but boy … he put me down in a millisecond! He is tough. His muscles are just unbelievable."
Reports that Putin flew similar route as MH17, presidential airport says 'hasn't overflown Ukraine for long time'
Published time: July 17, 2014 18:13 Edited time: July 18, 2014 04:29
Malaysian Airlines MH17 plane was travelling almost the same route as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s jet shortly before the crash that killed 298, Interfax news agency reports citing sources.
“I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft - 15:44 Moscow time,” a source told the news agency on condition of anonymity.
"The contours of the aircrafts are similar, linear dimensions are also very similar, as for the coloring, at a quite remote distance they are almost identical", the source added.
At the same time, there have been reports contradicting Intefax’s report that was the first and the only media source to publish the news, saying that Presidential plane was not flying over Ukraine at the same time.
As a source told Gazeta.ru online news portal, Putin’s plane does take off from Vnukovo-3 [the terminal that accepts business jets], but the president does not fly over the conflict-gripped neighboring country.
“Putin has only one jet – Board One, he does not fly other planes. This plane always takes off from Vnukovo-3, but the presidential plane have not been flying over Ukraine for a while,” the source at Vnukovo-3 terminal said.
President Putin was on his way from Brazil, where he attended the BRICS summit, to Moscow.
‘Tragedy would't have taken place if there was peace in Ukraine’
Ukraine should bear responsibility for Malaysian airliner tragedy, said the head of the Russian state at a meeting on economic issues, which he proposed to start with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the disaster.
“Obviously, the state over whose territory it happened bears responsibility for this terrible tragedy,” he said late on Thursday.
“This tragedy would not have happened if there was peace on this land, if military action in the southeast of Ukraine had not been resumed,” Putin said, adding that he has asked the appropriate Russian authorities to do everything to investigate the matter.
“We must do everything in our power that an objective picture of what happened goes public in our community, in Ukraine and all over the world,” Putin said as he expressed his condolences to the families of victims.
Flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, and was carrying 298 people. The passenger Boeing-777 was expected to enter Russian airspace at 5:20pm local time, but never did, a Russian aviation industry source said.“The plane crashed 60km away from the border,”Itar-Tass cited its source.
Malaysian plane reportedly shot down in Ukraine near Russian border
Adviser to Ukraine's interior minister says plane was shot down by missile launcher
July 17, 201411:23AM ETUpdated 2:28PM ET
Emergencies Ministry members work at the site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in Grabovo, Ukraine, in the Donetsk region, on Thursday.Maxim Zmeyev / Reuters
A Malaysian passenger airliner with 295 people on board crashed in Ukraine near the Russian border, the Interfax news agency cited an aviation industry source as saying on Thursday.
Malaysia Airlines confirmed on its Twitter feed that it had lost contact with Flight MH17, which was traveling from Amsterdam, adding that "the last known position was over Ukrainian airspace."
Malaysia Airlines also said in a statement that it received notification from Ukrainian air traffic control that it lost contact with the plane, a Boeing 777, about 31 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border.
The flight was carrying 280 passengers and 15 crew, the airline confirmed. Dozens of bodies were scattered around the smoldering wreckage in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reported. Ukrainian officials have confirmed to Al Jazeera that the death toll from the incident is “at least 295.”
The death toll includes 23 U.S. citizens, according to a Ukrainian Interior Ministry adviser quoted by Interfax.
President Barack Obama, speaking at an event in Delaware on Thursday afternoon, said that the U.S. government is working to determine if there were any American citizens on board and that the U.S. would "offer any assistance to help determine what happened and why."
An emergency services rescue worker told Reuters at least 100 bodies had so far been found at the scene, in the village of Grabovo, about 25 miles from the Russian border.
Meanwhile, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai is rushing back to Kuala Lumpur from Beijing, Al Jazeera has confirmed.
The self-appointed prime minister of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Alexander Borodai, told Al Jazeera that he is headed to the location of the downed plane and that a Donetsk People's Republic investigation team was now in the area.
Borodai blamed the downing of the plane on Ukraine's government forces.
"Apparently, it's a passenger airliner indeed, truly shot down by the Ukrainian air force," Borodai told Russia's state-run Rossiya 24 TV broadcaster. Kiev denied the involvement of Ukraine's armed forces.
Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, said on his Facebook page that the plane was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet when it was hit by a missile fired from a Buk surface-to-air missile system, which Russia began producing in the mid-1990s.
That flight, according to the aviation tracking website Flightstats.com, was scheduled to arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 6:10 a.m. local time. Major airlines have diverted their flight paths and said they would avoid flying over Ukrainian airspace.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Obama discussed the plane crash in Ukraine during a phone call.
The incident also comes after a Malaysia Airlines plane went missing on March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. It has not been found.
Philip J. Victor contributed to this report, with Al Jazeera and wire services
A map showing satellite communications company Inmarsat's global subscriptions. (Reuters)
Investigators searching for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight were ebullient when they detected what sounded like signals from the plane’s black boxes. This was a month ago, and it seemed just a matter of time before the plane was finally discovered.
Even before the black-box search turned up empty, observers had begun to raise doubts about whether searchers were looking in the right place. Authorities have treated the conclusion that the plane crashed in the ocean west of Australia as definitive, owing to a much-vaunted mathematical analysis of satellite signals sent by the plane. But scientists and engineers outside of the investigation have been working to verify that analysis, and many say that it just doesn’t hold up.
A Global Game of Marco Polo
Malaysia Airlines flights are equipped with in-flight communications services provided by the British company Inmarsat. From early on, the lynchpin of the investigation has been signals sent by Flight 370 to one of Inmarsat’s satellites. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this lonely little batch of “pings.” They’re the sole evidence of what happened to the plane after it slipped out of radar contact. Without them, investigators knew only that the plane had enough fuel to travel anywhere within 3,300 miles of the last radar contact—a seventh of the entire globe.
Although Inmarsat officials have described the mathematical analysis as “groundbreaking,” it’s actually based on some relatively straightforward geometry. Here’s how it works: Every so often (usually about once an hour), Inmarsat’s satellite sends a message to the plane’s communication system, asking for a simple response to show that it’s still switched on. This response doesn’t specify the plane’s location or the direction it's heading, but it does have some useful information that narrows down the possibilities.
You can think of the ping math like a game of Marco Polo played over 22,000 miles of outer space. You can’t see the plane. But you shout Marco, and the plane shouts back Polo. Based on how long the plane takes to respond, you know how far away it is. And from the pitch of its voice, you can tell whether it’s moving toward you or away from you—like the sound of a car on the highway—and about how fast.
This information is far from perfect. You know how far the plane was for each ping, but the ping could be coming from any direction. And you how fast the plane is moving toward or away from you. It could also be moving right or left, up or down, and the speeds would sound the same. The task of the Inmarsat engineers has been to take these pieces and put them together, working backwards to reconstruct possible flight paths that would fit the data.
What’s the Frequency?
There are two relevant pieces of information for each ping: the time it took to travel from plane to satellite, and the radio frequency at which it was received. It’s important to keep in mind that the transit times of the pings correspond todistances between satellite and plane, while frequencies correspond to relative speeds between satellite and plane. And this part’s critical: Relative speed isn’t the plane’s actual airspeed, just how fast it’s moving toward or away from the satellite.
Authorities haven’t released much information about the distances—just the now-famous “two arcs” graphic, derived in part from the distance of the very last ping. But they’ve released much more information about the ping frequencies. In fact, they released a graph that shows all of them:
Inmarsat
This graph is the most important piece of evidence in the Inmarsat analysis. What it appears to show is the frequency shifts or “offsets”—the difference between the normal “pitch” of the plane’s voice (its radio frequency) and the one you actually hear.
The graph also shows the shifts that would be expected for two hypothetical flight paths, one northbound and one southbound, with the measured values closely matching the southbound path. This is why officials have been so steadfastly confident that the plane went south. It seems to be an open-and-shut verdict of mathematics.
So it should be straightforward to make sure that the math is right. That’s just what a group of analysts outside the investigation has been attempting to verify. The major players have been Michael Exner, founder of the American Mobile Satellite Corporation; Duncan Steel, a physicist and visiting scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center; and satellite technology consultant Tim Farrar. They’ve used flight and navigation software like STK, which allows you to chart and make precise calculations about flight scenarios like this one. On their blogs and in an ongoing email chain, they’ve been trying to piece together the clues about Flight 370 and make sense of Inmarsat’s analysis. What follows is an attempt to explain and assess their conclusions.
What We Know
Although the satellite data provides the most important clues about the plane’s overall flight path, they’re not the only clues available. Authorities have some basic but crucial additional information about the flight that can help to make sense of the satellite math:
1. The satellite’s precise coordinates
The satellite in contact with Flight 370 was Inmarsat’s IOR satellite, parked in geostationary orbit above the Indian Ocean. The satellite is meant to be stationary, but its orbit has decayed somewhat, so that it actually rotates slightly around its previously fixed position. Its path is publicly available from the Center for Space Standards & Innovation.
3. The plane’s general motion toward or away from the satellite
From radar tracking, we know the plane traveled northeast, away from the satellite, over the first 40 minutes after takeoff, then westward, toward the satellite, until 94 minutes into the flight, when it was last detected on radar. Inmarsat spokesmen have stated that the ping distances got progressively longer over the last five hours of flight, meaning that the plane was moving away from the satellite during that time.
4. Two flight paths investigators think are consistent with the ping data
In addition to the frequency shift graph, the Inmarsat report includes a map with two “Example Southern Tracks,” one assuming a flight speed of 400 knots, the other a speed of 450 knots. Check it out:
Inmarsat
These bits of knowledge allow us to put some basic constraints on what a graph of the ping frequency shifts should look like. We’ll use more precise numbers later; for now, it’s helpful just to have some qualitative sense of what to expect:
5. Frequency shifts that should all be negative
When the plane is moving away from the satellite, the radio signal gets stretched out, so the frequency decreases. This means that the frequency shifts should be negative over most of the flight. Although there was an approximately one-hour period starting 40 minutes after takeoff when radar showed the plane moving westward, toward the satellite, the graph shows that no pings were sent during that time—so actually, all of the shifts on the graph should be negative.
6. Frequency shifts before takeoff that should be near zero
Plotting the satellite’s path in STK, you can see that it moves through an ellipse centered around the equator. Space scientist Steel has created this graphic of the satellite’s motion, including marks for its position when the plane took off and when it last pinged the satellite:
The satellite’s motion is almost entirely north-south, and the plane’s takeoff location in Kuala Lumpur is almost due east of the satellite. This means that the satellite was only barely moving relative to Kuala Lumpur, so the frequency shift for a plane nearly stationary on the ground at the airport would be nearly zero.
7. Frequency shift graph should match map of southbound flight paths
The way the Marc-Polo math works is that, if you assume the plane traveled at some constant speed, you can produce at most one path north and one path south that fit the ping data. As the example flight paths on Inmarsat’s map show, the faster you assume the plane was moving overall, the more sharply the path must arc away from the satellite.
This constraint also works the other way: Since flight paths for a given airspeed are unique, you can work backwards from these example paths, plotting them in STK to get approximate values for the ping distances and relative speeds Inmarsat used to produce them. The relative speeds can then be converted into frequency shifts, which should roughly match the values on the frequency graph. (This is all assuming that Inmarsat didn’t plot the two example paths at random but based on the ping data.) We’ll put more precise numbers on this below.
The Troubled Graph
But the graph defies these expectations. Taken at face value, the graph shows the plane moving at a significant speed before it even took off, then movingtoward the satellite every time it was pinged. This interpretation is completely at odds with the official conclusion, and flatly contradicted by other evidence.
The first problem seems rather straightforward to resolve: the reason the frequency shifts aren’t negative is probably that Inmarsat just graphed them as positive. Plotting absolute values is a common practice among engineers, like stating the distance to the ocean floor as a positive depth value rather than a negative elevation value.
But the problem of the large frequency shift before takeoff is more vexing. Exactly how fast does the graph show the plane and satellite moving away from each other prior to takeoff?
The first ping on the graph was sent at 16:30 UTC, eleven minutes prior to takeoff. The graphed frequency shift for this ping is about -85 Hz. Public recordsshow that the signal from the plane to the satellite uses a frequency of 1626 to 1660 MHz. STK calculations show the satellite’s relative motion was just 2 miles per hour toward the airport at this time. Factoring in the satellite’s angle above the horizon, the plane would need to have been moving at least 50 miles per hour on the ground to produce this frequency shift—implausibly high eleven minutes prior to takeoff, when flight transcripts show the plane had just pushed back from the gate and not yet begun to taxi.
On the other side of the frequency graph, the plane’s last ping, at 00:11 UTC, shows a measured frequency shift of about -252 Hz, working out to a plane-to-satellite speed of just 103 miles per hour. But the sample southbound paths published by Inmarsat show the plane receding from the satellite at about 272 miles per hour at this time.
In other words, the frequency shifts are much higher than they should be at the beginning of the graph, and much lower than they should be at the end. Looking at the graph, it’s almost as if there’s something contributing to these frequency shift values other than just the motion between the satellite and the plane.
Cracking the 'Doppler Code'
Exner, an engineer who’s developed satellite and meteorology technologies since the early 1970s, noted that the measured frequency shifts might come not just from each ping’s transmission from plane to satellite, but also from the ping’s subsequent transmission from the satellite to a ground station that connects the satellites into the Inmarsat network. In other words, Exner may have found the hidden source that seems to be throwing off the frequency graph.
Inmarsat’s analysis is highly ambiguous about whether the satellite-to-ground transmission contributed to the measured frequency shift. But if it did, a ground station located significantly south of the satellite would have resulted in frequency shifts that could account for the measured shifts being too large at the beginning of the graph and too small at the end. And sure enough, Inmarsat’s analysis states that the ground station receiving the transmission was located in Australia.
It’s possible to check the theory more precisely. Public records of Inmarsat ground stations show just one in Australia: in Perth. Using STK, you can precisely chart the satellite’s speed relative to this station, and, using thesatellite-to-ground signal frequency (about 3.6 GHz), you can then factor the satellite-to-ground shifts out of the frequency graph. Finally, you can at last calculate the true satellite-to-plane speed values.
The results seem to be nearly perfect. For the first ping, you wind up with a satellite-to-plane speed of about 1 mile per hour—just what you’d expect for a plane stationary or slowly taxiing eleven minutes before takeoff. This finding seems to provide a basic sanity check for interpreting the graph, and led Exner to declare on Twitter, “Doppler code cracked.” He produced a new graph of the frequency shifts, shown below. The gently sloping blue line shows the shifts between the satellite and the ground station in Perth, while the dotted red line shows the newly calculated satellite-to-plane shifts:
Michael Exner
Why Inmarsat’s Analysis Is Probably Wrong
If this interpretation—based on the work of Exner, Steel, Farrar, and myself—is correct, it would allow independent experts to fully review Inmarsat’s analysis, verify its work and check to see if Inmarsat might have missed any important clues that could further narrow down the plane’s whereabouts.
The problem is, although this interpretation matches two basic expectations for the frequency graph, it still doesn’t match Inmarsat’s example flight paths. The new frequency values, calculated by Exner, show the flight’s speed relative to the satellite as only about 144 miles per hour by the last ping, but Inmarsat’s example flight paths show a relative speed of about 272 miles per hour.
It’s possible these outside experts have still erred or missed some crucial detail in their attempts to understand the Inmarsat analysis. But that just means that Inmarsat’s analysis, as it has been presented, remains deeply confusing, or perhaps deeply confused. And there are other reasons to believe that Inmarsat’s analysis is not just unclear but mistaken. (Inmarsat stands by its analysis. More on that in a minute.)
Recall that the Marco-Polo math alone doesn’t allow you to tell which direction pings are coming from. So how could Inmarsat claim to distinguish between a northern and southern path at all? The reason is that the satellite itself wasn’t stationary. Because the satellite was moving north-south, it would have been moving faster toward one path than another—specifically, faster toward a southbound track than a northbound one over the last several hours of the flight. This means that the frequency shifts would also differ between a northbound and southbound path, as the graph shows with its two predicted paths.
But this is actually where the graph makes the least sense. The graph only shows different predicted values for the north and south tracks beginning at 19:40 UTC (presumably Inmarsat’s model used actual radar before this). By this time, the satellite was traveling south, and its southward speed would increase for the rest of the flight. The frequency shift plots for northern and southern paths, then, should get steadily further apart for the rest of the flight. Instead, the graph shows them growing closer. Eventually, they even pass each other: by the end of the flight, the graph shows the satellite traveling faster toward a northbound flight path than a southbound one, even though the satellite itself was flyingsouth.
One ping alone is damning. At 19:40 UTC, the satellite was almost motionless, having just reached its northernmost point. The graph shows a difference of about 80 Hz between predicted northbound and southbound paths at this time, which would require the satellite to be moving 33 miles per hour faster toward the southbound path than the northbound one. But the satellite’s overall speed was just 0.07 miles per hour at that time.
Inmarsat claims that it found a difference between a southbound and northbound path based on the satellite’s motion. But a graph of the frequency shifts along those paths should look very different from the one Inmarsat has produced.
Losing Faith
Either Inmarsat’s analysis doesn’t totally make sense, or it’s flat-out wrong.
For the last two months, I’ve been trying to get authorities to answer these questions. Malaysia Airlines has not returned multiple requests for comment, nor have officials at the Malaysian Ministry of Transportation. Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre and the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which have been heavily involved in the investigation, both declined to comment.
An Inmarsat official told me that to “a high degree of certainty, the proponents of other paths are wrong. The model has been carefully mapped out using all the available data.”
The official cited Inmarsat’s participation in the investigation as preventing it from giving further detail, and did not reply to requests for comments on even basic technical questions about the analysis. Inmarsat has repeatedly claimed that it checked its model against other aircrafts that were flying at the time, and peer-reviewed the model with other industry experts. But Inmarsat won’t say who reviewed it, how closely, or what level of detail they were given.
Until officials provide more information, the claim that Flight 370 went south rests not on the weight of mathematics but on faith in authority. Inmarsat officials and search authorities seem to want it both ways: They release charts, graphics, and statements that give the appearance of being backed by math and science, while refusing to fully explain their methodologies. And over the course of this investigation, those authorities have repeatedly issued confident pronouncements that they’ve later quietly walked back.
The biggest risk to the investigation now is that authorities continue to assume they’ve finally found the area where the plane went down, while failing to explore other possibilities simply because they don’t fit with a mathematical analysis that may not even hold up.
After all, searchers have yet to find any hard evidence—not so much as a shred of debris—to confirm that they’re looking in the right ocean.
