mr friendly guy wrote:I have heard that people are deploying what sounds like a device that listens to the pings from boats. Basically let it submerge by itself and then presumably gets pulled up by the boat. So there most probably isn't a need to divert subs for this.
That being said given how long its taken since the plane went missing, if a nation was inclined to send a sub, surely we wouldn't necessarily think it was diverted from close by giving the number of days it could have been travelling to reach the area.
That device is slow though and only has a few days left before the black box batteries die out. The subs, had they been in the area for a couple weeks, might already have found it.
mr friendly guy wrote:I have heard that people are deploying what sounds like a device that listens to the pings from boats. Basically let it submerge by itself and then presumably gets pulled up by the boat. So there most probably isn't a need to divert subs for this.
The US sent a single towed array sonar to be placed on an Australian ship purpose designed for finding this sort of signal. Citing this as a reason not to send other assets is basically the same as saying that since one plane is searching we don't need any other! You can only tow that sonar at 3.5 knots before it becomes ineffective because of how weak the black box sonar pulses are. Think about how long that's going to take to cover hundreds of thousands of square miles with only one ship. In reality even ten subs at once might not be able to do this in time, but it'd beat not trying!
Effectively on its own that sonar is useless for area search. Its just on hand in case we do get a better cue. The US also sent along a remote underwater vehicle to go with it that can recover the black boxes if located. They may tow it around some in hopes of getting something, but its going to be a damn lot of luck without a solid find of aircraft debris to cue from.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
They may tow it around some in hopes of getting something, but its going to be a damn lot of luck without a solid find of aircraft debris to cue from.
If they can't find the black boxes in time, it might come down to the kind of soul-raping tedious search that they needed to do for Titanic and Bismark...searching the ocean floor for months with side-scan sonar or a video submersible.
That might be impossible to do as in the case of Titanic and Bismarck they had pretty good initial locations, but iirc this is not present here.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
Yeah in both cases the ships positions where known from multiple ships logs to the tune of 5-10nm, and in the case of Titanic it still took several weeks to find her in the end, with the advantage of a previous search having ruled out some of the uncertainty. Bismarck was known to a similar degree of accuracy and it took several months, with several hundred square miles searched. Air France Flight 447 was found in a week several years ago by the same method, but its impact site was already fairly well known from debris and flight data transmission.
We have considerably better side side scan sonar today then in the 1980s, but the likely search area here if conducted on the present shot in the dark basis is orders of magnitude bigger and the improvements in scan area are nothing like that. Such a search certainly could be conducted, but the price tag would be very considerable and it seems very doubtful that Malaysia will pay for it. China might, or strong arm Malaysia into splitting the cost via say, deciding to ban Malaysian airlines from flying to China if they don't. Still it'd take many months, perhaps years if only one vessel were employed. It does help that we now have GPS so we can be fairly damn certain we aren't missing corners when if do active sonar search. Titanic would have been found on an earlier search by a French ship except it made a turn slightly earlier then planned and so just barely missed the debris field.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Borgholio wrote:What I wonder is why nobody has sent an attack sub or two to the area. Surely their hydrophones are sensitive enough to listen for the black box pingers.
The sea is too deep.
The subs don't have to dive that deep, just run silent and listen.
The depths in question are up to two times or more the maximum depth of a nuclear submarine can reach. This means a lot of sea and the changing temperatures at the lower depths will reduce sonar effectiveness.
This is why the US sent a towed sonar; it can reach deeper depths.
STGOD: Byzantine Empire Your spirit, diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face... and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.
Kreia
Also the Titanic and Bismark were much more larger objects than Boeing 777 making it easier to find them. Depending how plane hit water if impact angle were steep and high speed it may have disintagreted into small pieces that may be difficult to locate in sonar images. If it sank over underwater mountain range that would complicate search efforts even more.
I wouldn't be suprised if even after multiple months or years of sonar search nothing is found.
According to CNN and USA Today, a Chinese ship picked up what could be a black box pinger. A British nuclear sub is in the area searching. The Australian air force is preparing to send search planes out that way to confirm. Well...here's hoping.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Acoustic events provide 'encouraging lead' in hunt for black box of missing plane
Updated 54 minutes ago
RELATED STORY: MH370 search vessel detects pulse in southern Indian Ocean
MAP: Perth 6000
A Chinese ship has twice detected a pulse signal with characteristics of an aircraft black box, while an Australian vessel is also investigating an "acoustic noise" in the search for flight MH370.
The Chinese ship, Haixun 01, has picked up the pulse signal on two separate occasions within a two kilometre zone since overnight on Friday.
Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the international search effort, said the second detection occurred on Saturday afternoon.
"This morning we were contacted by the Chinese authorities and advised that Haixun 01 had late yesterday afternoon redetected the signals for 90 seconds within just two kilometres of the original detection," he said.
"This is an important and encouraging lead, but one which I urge you to continue to treat carefully.
This is an important and encouraging lead, but one which I urge you to continue to treat carefully.
Angus Houston
"We are working in a very big ocean and within a very large search area and so far, since the aircraft went missing, we have had very few leads which allow us to narrow the search area.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said the Australian vessels Ocean Shield and the HMS Echo would be redeployed to assist the Haixun 01.
However, he said the Ocean Shield would be delayed while it investigated a separate "acoustic event".
"We are looking at several hours to a couple of days" for the Ocean Shield to look at the separate acoustic lead, Air Chief Marshal Houston said.
He urged caution about jumping to conclusions about the nature of the signal picked up by the Haixun 01.
"What we have got here are fleeting, fleeting acoustic events," he said.
"The one the night before last lasted just a very short period of time. The one yesterday afternoon, I think it was 15:47 in the afternoon, was for 90 seconds. That's all we have got.
"It's not a continuous transmission. If you get close to the device, we should be receiving it for a longer period of time than just a fleeting encounter. But we have got a transmission, we must investigate it. That's the way we work."
Location of pulse detected by Chinese ship
INFOGRAPHIC: The reported location of a pulse signal detected by a Chinese vessel in the search for signs of flight MH370. (Google Maps)
Up to 10 military planes, two civil aircraft and 13 ships were expected to scour today's search area, 2,000 kilometres north-west of Perth in an effort to find wreckage from the plane.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said aircraft would be deployed to the area where the Haixun 01 detected the signal.
Houston says China sharing everything of relevance
Flight MH370 went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board, including six Australians.
The majority of the passengers on board flight MH370 were Chinese, and Malaysia officials have repeatedly come under fire from their families for the way the search has been handled.
Reports of the signal being detected by the Haixun 01 first rose through the Chinese media, but Air Chief Marshal Houston said "China is sharing everything that is relevant to the search".
"Let me just say ... China has seven ships out there - that's by far the largest fleet of ships," he said.
"They are out there looking for this aircraft and at the moment the most promising lead appears to be the one associated with the Haixun 01.
"I think we should be focusing on the positives and not start saying 'Are they doing this or doing that?'
"I'm very satisfied with the consultation, the coordination we are building with our Chinese friends. I spent two hours last night with the Chinese ambassador and we worked out the best way to affect that coordination and consultation for my responsibilities. I'm very, very happy about that."
Air Chief Marshal Houston said the revelation of the acoustic event being investigated by the Ocean Shield was "late breaking news" at the time of the press conference, about 1:30pm (AEST).
However, he echoed Prime Minister Tony Abbott's sentiments about providing information to the public as soon as it is available.
"I thought it was important that we are totally transparent with you," he said.
"I just want you to know that the search is a dynamic thing. Things are happening all the time."
Time running out in hunt for black box
The black box only has power to fire the signal for about a month, meaning the pulse is set to die any day now.
China's Xinhua news agency has reported the signal had a frequency of 37.5 kilohertz - the same as those emitted by flight recorders.
It said the signal was detected at about 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude, in the search zone about 2,000km off the West Australian coast.
Anish Patel, from the company Dukane Seacom, which produces the detection system for black box recorders, said the signals picked up by the Chinese ship are unlikely to be from anything other than a black box.
8 things about black boxes
MH370's black box isn't black, and time is running out to find it. Find out why.
"There is very little in nature or in the background noise of the ocean that emits this frequency, so unless it is another vehicle or other beacon in the vicinity, which I really doubt in this part of the ocean, this is a positive sign," he said.
However, Air Chief Marshal Houston said officials are "a long way from making any conclusion" on the nature of the signal.
"The water in which the Haixun 01 is working at the moment - it is very, very deep. I think it's in the order of 4-4,500 metres," he said.
"That's incredibly deep - 4.5 kilometres straight down, so any recovery operation is going to be incredibly challenging and very demanding and will take a long period of time. That's if there is anything down there.
"First of all we have got to establish the fact that there is something down there. We are a long way from making that conclusion.
"That's why we need HMS Echo and the Australian Defence vessel Ocean Shield to come to the location, because they have special equipment that can help us make the judgment whether there is anything down there.
"But I think the fact that we have had two detections, two acoustic events, in that location provides some promise which requires a full investigation of the location."
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
Just watched a live press conference. Australian ship had a two-hour detection and is trying to refine the location and refine the signal. Water is 3 miles deep so recovery might take a very long time.
The Aussies also reported two signals which is an important thing since were looking for two black boxes. Thing is these two ships made the detection 600km apart! That means one or both of them is making a convergence zone detection, and because the Australian ship is using a towed array it also has a chance of making a detection in the deep sound channel, in which strong sounds can go across entire oceans in good conditions. Though I am not entirely sure that seabed sound source at that depth can make a deep sound channel sound, its a weird thing. Nor is the channel consistent at all. Direct path contacts only work at fairly limited ranges.
So the search area is still potentially huge, and while the beacons don't simply die at 1 month, they do get weaker as battery voltage drops off making anything but direct path contact that much harder to accomplish. These acoustical path issues are no doubt why neither ship can hold the contact constantly. Until someone does the search area is still in the hundreds of thousands of square miles. But at least that very much is searchable with the available assets.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Search For Missing Malaysia Airlines Jetliner Will Be Suspended
Three countries leading the effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people aboard, say they plan to suspend their search for the missing airliner. While the search has turned up tantalizing clues, officials say hope of finding the jet is fading.
Despite finding debris that promised to be from the Boeing 777, ministers from Malaysia, China and Australia who met this week to discuss the state of the search also noted that "none of it had provided information that positively identified the precise location of the aircraft."
From Beijing, NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports:
"Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai told reporters that searchers are not giving up, they're just going to put the search on hold until they get some information on the plane's location.
"They've already spent $135 million and scoured over 46,000 square miles of the southern Indian Ocean looking for it. The current phase of the search is almost finished but has been delayed by poor weather.
"The cause of the plane's disappearance remains a mystery. One explanation is that the pilot might have crashed the plane into the ocean on purpose, but Transport Minister Liow says there's not enough evidence to support that."
The Malaysian transport minister was meeting with his counterparts from China, where many of the passengers were from, and from Australia, which is leading the search effort. They say the current search, of an area about 120,000 square kilometers, is nearly at an end, and that the chances it will prove fruitful are slim.
Exclusive: MH370 Pilot Flew a Suicide Route on His Home Simulator Closely Matching Final Flight
New York has obtained a confidential document from the Malaysian police investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that shows that the plane’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, conducted a simulated flight deep into the remote southern Indian Ocean less than a month before the plane vanished under uncannily similar circumstances. The revelation, which Malaysia withheld from a lengthy public report on the investigation, is the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass murder-suicide.
More at the link.
Also, gg Malaysia. Really good job on misleading the public.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
I can sort of understand the appeal of using an airplane to commit suicide. Sort of. In a very vague way. Fly out over the ocean and disappear and the usual assumption is accident, not suicide, which is important to some people (and may also affect things like insurance payouts to those you leave behind). But why take a plane full of people with you? Or maybe it's just that it's so very much easier for an American pilot to rent a small airplane to do that with, whereas maybe in some of these other places getting an airplane other than the one they fly as part of a job would be well-nigh impossible?
Even so - I'd prefer that they had found the wreckage, regardless of what may or may not have happened. It removes the question marks. I mean, sure, we can speculate it was suicide but it's not proven. I like to know what really happened.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Broomstick wrote:I can sort of understand the appeal of using an airplane to commit suicide. Sort of. In a very vague way. Fly out over the ocean and disappear and the usual assumption is accident, not suicide, which is important to some people (and may also affect things like insurance payouts to those you leave behind). But why take a plane full of people with you? Or maybe it's just that it's so very much easier for an American pilot to rent a small airplane to do that with, whereas maybe in some of these other places getting an airplane other than the one they fly as part of a job would be well-nigh impossible?
Even so - I'd prefer that they had found the wreckage, regardless of what may or may not have happened. It removes the question marks. I mean, sure, we can speculate it was suicide but it's not proven. I like to know what really happened.
Not impossible in Malaysia at least, it would not have been unduly hard for him to rent a general aviation plane if he wanted to. Though I don't know how plausible any flight plan that involves disappearing at sea would be in that case.
I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character
It's partially an island nation, and the rest on a peninsula - plenty of islands around to flight plan a trip to then get "lost" along the way.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Also, gg Malaysia. Really good job on misleading the public.
It's Malaysia. The same country with a PM who managed to consolidate power despite being linked to a multibillion dollar fraud scandal (1MDB) via his step son.
STGOD: Byzantine Empire Your spirit, diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face... and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.
Kreia
