This final ping was bto data? If it landed normally in Kazakhstan then how did this data get generated? Are you hypothesizing that this final ping indicating a deep dive was spoofed? Or did this dive actually happen, just on the northern route? Is there any body of water north it could have crashed into? Caspian Sea? Or perhaps just into barren land or mountain in Kazakhstan?
Great questions. The final pings had both BFO and BTO components; the BTO part, showing how far the plane was from the satellite, is very hard or impossible to fake, and is thus almost certainly a true reflection of the plane's location regardless of whether it went north or south. If the plane went south, then the BFO values were generated "innocently" as a result of the normal functioning of the Satellite Data Unit, and imply a steep dive; if they were tampered with to produce a misleading impression that the plane went south, then the final values don't necessarily mean that the plane was in a dive. Thus, it didn't have to have crashed at all if it went north, it could have landed, refueled, and flown on somewhere else.
So basically the ping indicating a steep dive could be spoofed. And would have to have been spoofed for your theory to be correct. Would this particular spoofing have been done in a manner similar to the other BFO spoofing? I'm just trying to figure out if this steep dive ping is special and different from the other BFO data.
Exactly, the ping metadata that indicates a steep dive in the "innocent" scenario could be spoofed. And yes, would have to have been spoofed for the northerly track to Kazakhstan to be feasible. It's impossible to know with the information in hand (at least by me -- maybe Honeywell could figure it out) whether it resulted from the same alternation process that was used in the first six pings to suggest a southerly direction of travel.
I guess I'm just having a lot of trouble getting my head around this spoofing, given it involves I guess spoofing the running out of fuel, the power up of the sdu for that final ping, then the data from that final ping indicating the dive. I think it's starting to stretch credulity to suggest someone was not only cognizant enough to do all this spoofing and feel it was necessary to do, but also to do it. And to get everything to line up in a patter that makes sense to how this would happen in reality.
I guess if you have already spoofed the data to show it's going south, is it worth this extra effort to spoof all this running out of fuel and dive stuff, given you could mess it up in someway to betray this fact? Is the risk worth the reward at that point ?
I understand your confusion. What's important to understand, I think, is that when investigators first analyzed the Inmarsat data they were at first stumped by some aspects of the BFO data. While the second through sixth pings all seemed to line up with what you'd expect for a plane flying south, they couldn't explain the values for the first and seventh, both of which were generated by a reboot. They just didn't match the values generated during other known instances of SDU rebooting. Ultimately, they were able to explain the values of the 7th ping by assuming that it was due to motion in the vertical direction, which isn't compensated for by the Doppler precompensation algorithm. All of this, of course, based on the assumption that the plane went south and the data was generated innocently. If it wasn't, then the hijackers were doing something funny with the SDU that we don't understand and it created anomalous BFO values that were later interpreted as indicating a dive.
In other words, I don't think we should assume that all of the data was generated to support a patter, some of it was noise that investigators later developed stories to explain.
You ask if spoof perpetrators risked messing "it up someway to betray" their artifice -- yes, I would argue that they not only took the risk but their story was in fact betrayed. Most glaringly, by the fact that the airplane wreckage was not found on the seabed where the Inmarsat data indicated it should be, but also in the inexplicable nature of the first SDU reboot, as we discussed in episode 5. There's another problematic aspect to the data which I haven't talked about much, which is that the BTO and BFO data each suggest a different endpoint along the 7th arc.
I'm still not a total believer in your theory but I love the podcast and that you are continuing to ask great questions and continue to seek new evidence. The type of open minded thought this case needs.
Not sure if this has been found and discussed, but there's an interesting paper that reinterprets the final two pings as well as simulator data that was discarded by the FBI: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355242503_Final_Two_Communications_from_MH370_Supports_Controlled_Eastward_Descent_Scenario
Yes, I'm going to be talking about this in tomorrow's episode.
This final ping was bto data? If it landed normally in Kazakhstan then how did this data get generated? Are you hypothesizing that this final ping indicating a deep dive was spoofed? Or did this dive actually happen, just on the northern route? Is there any body of water north it could have crashed into? Caspian Sea? Or perhaps just into barren land or mountain in Kazakhstan?
Great questions. The final pings had both BFO and BTO components; the BTO part, showing how far the plane was from the satellite, is very hard or impossible to fake, and is thus almost certainly a true reflection of the plane's location regardless of whether it went north or south. If the plane went south, then the BFO values were generated "innocently" as a result of the normal functioning of the Satellite Data Unit, and imply a steep dive; if they were tampered with to produce a misleading impression that the plane went south, then the final values don't necessarily mean that the plane was in a dive. Thus, it didn't have to have crashed at all if it went north, it could have landed, refueled, and flown on somewhere else.
So basically the ping indicating a steep dive could be spoofed. And would have to have been spoofed for your theory to be correct. Would this particular spoofing have been done in a manner similar to the other BFO spoofing? I'm just trying to figure out if this steep dive ping is special and different from the other BFO data.
Exactly, the ping metadata that indicates a steep dive in the "innocent" scenario could be spoofed. And yes, would have to have been spoofed for the northerly track to Kazakhstan to be feasible. It's impossible to know with the information in hand (at least by me -- maybe Honeywell could figure it out) whether it resulted from the same alternation process that was used in the first six pings to suggest a southerly direction of travel.
I guess I'm just having a lot of trouble getting my head around this spoofing, given it involves I guess spoofing the running out of fuel, the power up of the sdu for that final ping, then the data from that final ping indicating the dive. I think it's starting to stretch credulity to suggest someone was not only cognizant enough to do all this spoofing and feel it was necessary to do, but also to do it. And to get everything to line up in a patter that makes sense to how this would happen in reality.
I guess if you have already spoofed the data to show it's going south, is it worth this extra effort to spoof all this running out of fuel and dive stuff, given you could mess it up in someway to betray this fact? Is the risk worth the reward at that point ?
I understand your confusion. What's important to understand, I think, is that when investigators first analyzed the Inmarsat data they were at first stumped by some aspects of the BFO data. While the second through sixth pings all seemed to line up with what you'd expect for a plane flying south, they couldn't explain the values for the first and seventh, both of which were generated by a reboot. They just didn't match the values generated during other known instances of SDU rebooting. Ultimately, they were able to explain the values of the 7th ping by assuming that it was due to motion in the vertical direction, which isn't compensated for by the Doppler precompensation algorithm. All of this, of course, based on the assumption that the plane went south and the data was generated innocently. If it wasn't, then the hijackers were doing something funny with the SDU that we don't understand and it created anomalous BFO values that were later interpreted as indicating a dive.
In other words, I don't think we should assume that all of the data was generated to support a patter, some of it was noise that investigators later developed stories to explain.
You ask if spoof perpetrators risked messing "it up someway to betray" their artifice -- yes, I would argue that they not only took the risk but their story was in fact betrayed. Most glaringly, by the fact that the airplane wreckage was not found on the seabed where the Inmarsat data indicated it should be, but also in the inexplicable nature of the first SDU reboot, as we discussed in episode 5. There's another problematic aspect to the data which I haven't talked about much, which is that the BTO and BFO data each suggest a different endpoint along the 7th arc.
Thanks Jeff!
I'm still not a total believer in your theory but I love the podcast and that you are continuing to ask great questions and continue to seek new evidence. The type of open minded thought this case needs.