MH370 - Developments

The weeks have gone by and things have been happening, not the least of which has been the probable discovery of the black boxes. I say "probable" simply because the source of acoustic pings is so highly unlikely to be anything but CVR or FDR units, and there can be no doubt that they would be from MH370 if black boxes they should turn out to be.

Only 10 days ago, those in charge of co-ordinating the search were quoted as saying "It's not like finding a needle in a haystack... we haven't even got close to finding the haystack yet" (paraphrased). So how is it that we are in the fortunate place we now appear to be so very quickly? Remember that although the Air France wreckage was discovered within a few days of the accident, it was two years before the black boxes were recovered.

So far, those in authority have credited the further analysis of radar tracking and satellite fixing as the strong sauce in refining the search area. Doppler-style satellite signal timing more closely defining the possible latitude/longitude boundaries, and the radar track data refining the groundspeed of the 777.

What comes as a surprise though, was the deployment of the towed pinger detector. Given the enormous area of the sea bed to be searched, the swift acquisition of sonic pings is nothing short of miraculous. It's equivalent of a punter buying his or her first lotto ticket and then winning the jackpot, the odds against it were so enormous. But from all available official sources, it's now policy that the pingers were from MH370's black boxes.

As this is typed, the pings are rapidly fading as the batteries deplete, so the pinpointing of the boxes is as accurate as it's going to be until located finally by cameras and/or side-scan sonar. There have been many cautions from the official spokespeople that despite this extraordinary good fortune, it may take a very long time before the CVR and FDR are finally recovered.

The Bluefin 21 remote submersible is now on station, but has yet to be deployed. The official position is that while there's even a remote chance that a faint signal may yet be detected from the black boxes, the searchers are reluctant to launch the Bluefin 21 in order to avoid denegrating any faint ping that might yet be detected.

So we wait.

A point worth further pondering is that almost miraculous detection of the pings. The range of those sonic impulses at the depths which the boxes must lie, is only a couple of miles, so the speed with which they were acquired is breathtaking. Unless there were other processes at work. In my first blog post on this tragedy, I suggested that the only way the recorders would be discovered would be if the US Navy had some of its submarine assets have a snoop around areas of interest with their hi-tech hydrophones and sonar gear.

Right now, the US Navy spokesperson has confirmed that their assets, the towed pinger locator, Poseidon P8 maritime search aircraft and the yet-to-be-deployed Bluefin 21, are attached to the search, but when asked about submarine search activity, he gave the "neither confirm or deny" response that is US Defence Dept policy about such things.

So we don't know if US submarines have been involved in the search or not. We may never know. But we do know that the UK sent a nuclear sub to the area and it is officially part of the search, so who knows... perhaps they were involved in narrowing the options.

Meanwhile, we wait a little longer...