Missing Boeing 777: Disturbing Disappearing Versions

No matter how alarming it was, but the story of the Boeing 777-200ER, the 370 flight, may turn out to be much more disturbing than we think, but everything is in order.

Having flown out 8 Martha to 00: 41 at the appointed course, after half an hour the connection with the airliner was gone, apparently the plane stopped giving signals to the control room. Around 01: The 30 aircraft disappeared from a civilian radar view, between Malaysia and Vietnam. The ACARS monitoring system, transmitting the signal to earth via satellite communications, was manually disabled, and for this you need to have special skills in this kind of electronics - says Richard Quest, a CNN correspondent, after getting acquainted with the opinion of experts. After that, the plane was already conducted by military radars, which recorded its abrupt change in course. Flight time from Malaysia to Beijing is about an hour, although the military claim that the aircraft was observed on their radar for 7 hours. In seven hours, the Boeing’s radius of flight increased significantly in almost any direction, making it difficult to search. Experts believe that the most likely route for it to follow may be Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, or Indonesia and the Indian Ocean.

But what is most interesting is that, according to all available data, Flight 370 was hijacked deliberately. This is, for example, evidenced by the testimony of the Malaysian military radar, which recorded that the Boeing 777 rapidly rose to an altitude of 45 thousand feet, an altitude at which all passengers, without oxygen masks, lost consciousness, or perhaps even some died. Then the plane sharply “drew” down to an altitude of 23 thousand feet.

If, for example, the Boeing then crashed, as the New York Times describes the opinion of experts, then one could come to the conclusion that there was a struggle in the cockpit (cabin), perhaps between the pilot and the hijackers, but since the plane then returned to its normal position and continued to fly , it remains to come to the conclusion that this was done deliberately to “neutralize” the passengers. With such a maneuver, most likely, the emergency system of oxygen masks should have been activated, but it is also possible that the specialist could have blocked it too. Further, there is information that the plane spent a certain time at an altitude of 5 thousand feet, which indicates that the pilot sought to remain invisible. Indeed, as it became known today, the plane managed to pass unseen through the airspace of three countries.

From the above, you can at least come to several conclusions. Most likely, the passengers as such were not the aim of the hijacking, and perhaps they are no longer alive. Then the plane remains. If the target of the hijacking was Boeing 777 itself, then this prospect is much more serious. Boeing 777 is a wide-body wide-body aircraft. He is able to fly more than 21 thousands of kilometers and is the farthest passenger aircraft in the world. Farther than it, only strategic aviation bombers fly. Nothing comes to your mind?

Further, this aircraft is equipped with the most powerful jet engines in the history of aviation. Thus, there is only one conclusion - it is no coincidence that this particular plane was stolen. It is not for nothing that the modification of this Boeing has the abbreviation “ER”, which means Extended Range, which in translation is nothing more than “increased range” of flight. Moreover, this modification has an increased fuel reserve and maximum take-off weight, since it was intended by the designers for transatlantic international transport.

17 March 2003 of the year, such an aircraft managed to fly 177 minutes in emergency mode with 255 passengers, that is, on one single engine. There is no doubt that this is a super-plane. The maximum take-off weight of this modification is 351,534 kg. Moreover, this type of liner is also the most reliable. Since the start of its mass production in the 1995 year, only 3 crashes have occurred to him, two of them on the ground upon landing. Thus, the option of a plane crash with accidental or emergency reasons can practically be minimized.

So, let's look at what could be the purpose of hijacking such a powerful and reliable aircraft? Of course, the first thing that may come to mind is the possibility of committing a mega-terrorist act, similar to the attacks of September 11 in the United States. It does not make sense to use such a large liner for smuggling purposes (for example, transporting drugs or weapons), since such an aircraft cannot be used for a long time, it is easy to track it in the air and delay it. The terrorist attack is one of the undoubted possibilities, but another prospect comes to my mind, a much more formidable one.

The Little Boy uranium atomic bomb, dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, weighed 4,000 kg. It measured 3 meters in length and 71 centimeters in diameter. The plutonium "Fat Man" dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 weighed only 4,600 kg and was 3 and a half meters long. Of course, this is not just a bomb that just needs to be dropped from an airplane. This is a complex technical and mechanical process, accompanied by a complex chemical reaction inside the bomb itself and requires a deep understanding of mounting on the aircraft itself and further use, but this is not the main excuse for excluding such a prospect. It remains to determine where such weapons can be purchased and where they can be delivered. What immediately comes to mind is, for example, Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons (Pakistan, for example, has been within the reach of Boeing since its change of course), or the Soviet arsenal, information on which, after the collapse of the USSR, was strictly classified. Is there a chance that such a terrible weapon could fall into the wrong hands?

The Israeli Air Force, as was reported yesterday morning in the Israeli press, has already been put on alert. For example, the dispatchers were instructed to communicate with the pilots of the aircraft, up to and including literally conducting a detailed interrogation of radio communications with them, when they entered the airspace of the State of Israel, in order to determine the approaching liner with maximum accuracy. And what can actually be done if an unidentified plane approaches the air border of the state? First of all fighters will be raised into the air. The question remains, at what level and under what circumstances can an order be given to knock down a Boeing 777 aircraft, and even if he does not just end up in the airspace of the country, but already reaches a settlement?

The only thing I really hope is two things: firstly, that I am deeply mistaken, and secondly, that the last words “... everything is fine, good night” spoken by the pilot of flight 370 will not go down in any story, no matter what the end She didn't have one.

Author: Simon Tsipis, an employee of the National Security Studies Institute (Israel).