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In reply to the discussion: EXCLUSIVE: Radar Data Suggests Missing Malaysia Plane Flown Deliberately Toward Andamans - Source [View all]kristopher
(29,798 posts)I'd say that you are engaging in a kind of restricted thinking that can have disastrous consequences. Proper analysis requires review of all possible scenarios in order to establish a pecking order of probabilities.
Sure you start with the most probable being the aircraft destroyed in flight. But that ended when the military radar picked up a large, unidentified aircraft in their flight space. They didn't just ignore the damned thing since finding targets like that are EXACTLY their reason for existing. And don't forget there was already a notice out that a commercial passenger jet was missing.
They would have attempted to contact the aircraft while simultaneously notifying a preset list of people assigned responsibility for evaluating the situation and responding. Those people gather and are fed the best data available; including constant communications with higher and lower elements of their command structure as well as real time coordination with appropriate international agencies.
And, by design, you are not going to see any of that happening. Why in the world do you think the international press would be automatically given access to crucial information that would be vital to their efforts to track that aircraft.
Deliberate confusion and obfuscation of what actual tools are available to the mission would the standard approach to public relations. I don't know if they established contact or if they allowed the aircraft to go on its way because they had the Mx pinger to track it with; but that specific really doesn't affect the way this would be handled in the public arena unless the people who committed the act wanted the public brought into the picture.
It has been a while, but I have sat on that side of the table. They are focused on the mission of finding and hopefully rescuing the passengers and they will do whatever it takes to accomplish that. Misleading the public is the least of their concerns.