The Parliament Hearing

Last Friday was the MH17 hearing of the committee for Foreign Affairs of Dutch Parliament in the Dutch Parliament building in the Hague. I had been  invited as an external expert to this hearing (see a previous post), with the task to brief the parliament members on what military satellite systems from what countries might have observed the disaster, and could potentially provide useful information with a view on the criminal prosecution of the case.

An audio record of the block of the hearing that featured my presence can be downloaded here (it is in Dutch of course). Related to this, I also appeared on national television that evening (video here and below) in a long item in EénVandaag, a news background program broadcast nationwide at 6 pm. After the hearing, I also did a 20-minute live interview on national radio (audio here, below the video on that page).

It was quite an experience to be in this role, a role which I never had expected to have to play when I wrote my first blogpost on this all. I spent the better part of January doing research into even the most remotely possible questions I could imagine, digging up information, checking and re-checking facts, and writing the position paper.

The full hearing itself took 8 hours (I myself only attended some two hour of these though), and the block that included me took one hour (from 12:00 to 13:00 CET). I shared this block with Paul Riemens, who is the head of Dutch air traffic control; and prof. Piet van Genderen, who is a radar expert from Delft University.

Letter by the Minister

In the evening before the hearing, the Minister of Justice and Security, Van der Steur, had suddenly dispatched a letter to Parliament in answer to questions by Omtzigt , in which he stated that the prosecutor did receive radar and satellite data, and that in their perception there was "no need" for additional requests of those. He also mentioned that the prosecutor had insight in these data "through the MIVD"  (the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service) by means of "ambtsberichten" (i.e. brief statements on what the data show, not the data itself). The latter suggested to me, that the data are not declassified, and perhaps will not be declassified. Which is odd and unnecessary, as well as unwise, as I will discuss later in this blogpost.

The timing (combined with the fact that similar earlier questions by MP's Omtzigt and Sjoerdsma got unanswered) suggests that the Minister's letter to Parliament was a direct response to the position papers by Van Genderen and me, so it does seem our input into this discussion had some immediate effect.

Parliament members present

Parliament members attending the block of the hearing which I participated in, were Michiel Servaes (Labour party); Harry van Bommel (Socialist Party); Pieter Omtzigt (Christian Democrats); Louis Bontes (list Bontes/Van Klaveren, a right-wing splinter party split off from Wilders' Party for Freedom); Raymond de Roon (Party for Freedom); Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (Democrats '66); and Han ten Broeke (Party for Freedom and Liberty). Chairman of the hearing was MP Fred Teeven (Party for Freedom and Liberty: who incidentally was State Secretary at the Justice and Security department at the time of the MH17 tragedy), who is vice-chairman of the parliament committee in question.

some of the Parliament members during the hearing:
 f.l.t.r. Ten Broeke, Servaes, van Bommel and Omtzigt

Hearing proceedings and questions

Riemens, Van Genderen and me all three got a few minutes to present our information to the MP's. My main message to the committee was that there are a lot of military systems, from several countries including more than one ally of our country, that might provide useful information. I briefly outlined what kind of systems might provide what information, mentioning SBIRS, but also SIGINT and IMINT.

Next, the parliament members in the committee asked us further questions and clarifications. Servaes asked me which indications I had whether the Dutch prosecutor really needed more satellite data (harking back to the suggestions in the Minister's letter of the previous evening). Related to that, Van Bommel asked me whether my plea for an attempt to get these data and get them declassified was in the interest of transparency, or had some other additional goal. He also asked whether these data might help to further restrict the location from where the missile was fired or not. Ten Broeke asked me (and Van Genderen) for my opinion on the current government position in this.

answering questions

I amongst others answered that I was not a lawyer or attorney, but that it seemed to me that declassifying the evidence was crucial in order to be able to use them for a criminal prosecution, as well as indeed in the general interest of transparency and accountability. There are so many questions around this subject, and so many (conspiracy-) theories and different views (not to speak of desinformation floating around), that the final conclusions should be verifiable to all (after the hearing, I pointed out in the radio interview that it is also very important to the families of the victims to be able to judge these results, something also pointed out in the tv item by a father who lost his son in the tragedy).

In this context I also pointed to remarks made a year ago (17 Dec 2014) by Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of  European and Eurasian affairs in the US government, and read these out loud to the Parliament members. During a Q & A session at the American Enterprise Institute, Nuland answered questions by a Russian reporter and said that the US government had already shared data with the Netherlands, but moreover that she expected that there:

"..will be, I believe, in the context of the Dutch case, when they roll it out – they are likely to ask us to declassify some of that, and I think we will be able to help in that regard"

In other words: she not only expects a request for declassification from the Dutch government: but she also expects that the US Government will answer positively to that request!

During the hearing, and partly in response to some of the questions,  I warned the parliament members that if these satellite data would not be pursued and a request to declassify them not be made, this could possibly stimulate a lingering feeling that the Dutch prosecution left data unchecked or unreveiled. I told them that if things transpired this way (the wording of the letter by the Minister was not so encouraging in this respect) I feared that this would potentially provide handles to those parties with an interest in denying the conclusions of the investigation, to question these results.

Omtzigt asked me if there were earlier precedents of these kinds of data being declassified. There are: in the hearing I provided the examples of infrared data on meteoric fireballs (which these satellites also register) being released to astronomers for analysis; the declassification of satellite imagery in order to argue the necessity of the invasion of Iraq at the start of the second Gulf War; and China providing satellite imagery of potential floating debris in the case of the search for the missing MH370 aircraft.

Sjoerdsma asked me whether, in case the data would be declassified and supplied, our country had the expertise to independently analyse them and verify the claims made from them. For the infrared data I answered that I am not sure, so could answer neither positively nor negatively. For IMINT and SIGINT, our country certainly has that expertise, both within our own military as well as on Dutch universities.

De Roon wanted me to clarify further which countries had what satellite systems. Bontes asked me whether the fact that we were now so reliant on foreign data from foreign systems, might be an argument to start to build, as a country, surveillance satellite capacity ourselves (I think I am really not the person to answer that question).

During my answering all these questions, van Bommel additionally asked me in what phase of the criminal investigation these data should be made public, and whether it was perhaps too early for that in the current phase.

To the latter I can agree, although (again) I am no lawyer or attorney. But I can understand that perhaps, in this phase of the inquiry, the prosecutors do not want to publicly show their hand of cards.

I do have some concern though, about whether at the end of the trajectory these data are going to be made public, in the interest of verifiability. In my opinion, they should. I find the wording of the letter by the Minister of 21 January 2016 however not very promising in that respect.

The  contributions by the other invited experts contained some significant points. Van Genderen for example made very clear that having the secondary radar data is not enough. He also made very clear that Ukrainian claims that all their radar systems were down for maintenance that day, are hard to believe, as that is against what is normal. Riemens made clear that normally, the air traffic controller on duty will be heard in the investigation (which has not happened in this case) and that radar data normally are available within an hour. Later during the hearing, well-known lawyer Knoops made very clear that without the original raw (radar, satellite) data being available, the prosecution would have no leg to stand on.

SIGINT, IMINT and MH17

(this post continues discussions in earlier posts on possible classified space-based observations of the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over the Ukraine in 2014)

My position paper written for the Dutch Parliament Foreign Affairs committee hearing of Jan 22 (see my previous post) has a strong focus on infra-red detections of a missile by SBIRS. There are however a few other relevant aspects of Space Based observations in connection to the MH17 disaster that I could not cover in the space available to me for that paper.

In this post, I will provide some brief additional information about:

1) potential roles for IMINT satellites;
2) the positions of SIGINT satellites.


Optical and radar IMINT

1. optical IMINT

Both (unclassified) commercial and (classified) military satellite systems for high-resolution optical imagery (Image Intelligence, IMINT) exist, and both sources will be discussed below.

Optical and radar imagery obtained in the hours before, as well as during the event, might be used to look for missile systems, both on the Ukrainian as well as separatist sides of the front, in a wide circle around the site of the shootdown. It could also be used to verify the reconstruction of the purported movements of a Russian BUK system published by citizen journalist team Bellingcat, a study which is not uncontested. The Bellingcat team places the BUK in certain places at certain times, and if space-based imagery (either military or commercial) for those locations and times exist they could perhaps verify these claims.

The US military has one classified system of optical satellites with a (much-) better-than-1-meter capability: the KH-11 IMPROVED CRYSTAL/Evolved Enhanced CRYSTAL (aka 'Keyhole' or 'KENNAN') which reportedly (and theoretically, from known 2.4 meter mirror size specs) have a resolution in the order of  10-20 cm.

Mid-2014 this system consisted of four satellites: USA 161, USA 186, USA 224 and USA 245. All of these have been discussed on this blog before and are tracked by our amateur network.

We have accurate tracking data on three of these, USA 161, USA 224 and USA 245 for the days around 17 July 2014 and hence can pinpoint when these potentially had the crash area in their sight to better than a minute. For USA 186, which was actively manoeuvering around that time and for which we have a gap in our coverage form June to August 2014, pass times are a bit less certain and constrained to about 20-30 minutes accuracy.

First, we can positively affirm that one of the KH-11, USA 161 (2001-044A) actually had the Ukraine in its potential view during the incident at 13:20 UT:

click images to enlarge

Please note well: this does however NOT mean that USA 161 delivered imagery of the event. A number of factors should be taken into account:

1. the cloud cover at that moment, which might hinder imagery;
2. the crash site is located quite in the perifery of the satellites footprint area;
3. these satellites do likely not make images continuously, but only if commanded to do so, for specific areas of interest;
4. there is the question of whether USA 161 was still operational at that time. It was the oldest of the on-orbit KH-11, being launched 14 years earlier. Only a few months later it was de-orbitted, so it was clearly at the end of its lifetime.

In addition to their KH-11 system, the US military hires space on commercial high resolution optical IMINT satellites from the US commercial firm Digitalglobe (the same firm that supplies Google Earth with satellite imagery).  

Digitalglobe operates a number of satellites with a better-than-1-meter capability: Geoeye-1 (0.4 meter resolution), and Worldview 1, 2 and 3 (0.25-0.50 meter resolution). Most of the satellite imagery that the US Department of Defense supplies to the press (when briefing on the military situation in e.g. North Korea, Syria and Libya) comes from these commercial satellites.

Imagery from these same Digitalglobe satellites is also available commercially, to any interested party with money. And in addition to DigitalGlobe, the European company Airbus Defense and Space also offers commercial high-resolution optical imagery from its SPOT and Pléiades satellites. Pléiades 1A and 1B offer a 0.5 meter resolution. SPOT 5 and 6 offer a 2.5-1.5 meter resolution.

Accurate orbital data from non-classified sources are available for all the commercial imagers for 17 July 2014. The satellites in question made several daylight passes over the area in the morning of July 17, 2014, between 8:00 and 10:00 GMT, i.e. during the 3 to 5 hours before the shootdown, a period when the skies were still less clouded.

This does not mean that they necessarily made imagery of course. Yet any imagery these commercial Digitalglobe and Airbus satellites did make on July 16, 17 and 18 have the advantage that they are not "classified", unlike the US military data, meaning that they could be used and published without diplomatic problems by the Dutch government in the Dutch criminal investigation into the disaster.

I would therefore expect the Dutch OM to either buy or subpoena all potential Digitalglobe and Airbus imagery from these dates. They can be used to reconstruct missile system positions in the area (both on the Ukrainian, the separatist and Russian sides) within range of the shootdown location, and they can be used to hunt for missile transports (see my earlier remarks about the Bellingcat claims). The Dutch Air Force has an imagery analysis unit that is well suited to help with such an analysis. Including imagery from the days before and after the incident as well is useful to look for differences between imagery of these respective dates.


2. Radar IMINT

The US military has two systems for high resolution radar IMINT: the Lacrosse (ONYX) system of which currently only one satellite, Lacrosse 5 (2005-016A) is left on-orbit, and the radar component of the Future Imagery Architecture (known as TOPAZ), consisting of three satellites: FIA Radar 1, 2 and 3 (2010-046A, 2012-014A and 2013-072A). These systems should be capable of providing imagery with sub-meter resolutions, and like optical imagery, they can be used to look for the presence of missile systems in the area. They have the added bonus that they are not hampered by cloud cover, unlike optical imagery.

Apart from the USA, the German military also operates a radar satellite system, the SAR-Lupe satellites. The French military likewise operates its own radar satellite system, the Hélios system. Japan operates the IGS system (which includes both optical and radar satellite versions).

All of these satellites made passes over the Ukraine at one time or another on July 17 2014, so all of them might have provided useful imagery.  FIA Radar 3 made a pass right over the area in question near 11:43 UT for example, some 1.5 hours before the tragedy. FIA Radar 2 made a pass over the area at 18:00 UT, 4.5 hours after the shootdown. These are just a few examples.

Given what was happening in the area around this time, and the strong concern of NATO and the EU about this, it is almost certain that imagery of the area was collected by these US, German and French satellite systems.


SIGINT

My position paper briefly mentions that a number of countries have space-based SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) capacities. This does not only concern capacities for (for example) the NSA to tap into your cellphone and satellite telephone conversations: another important strategic aspect of space-based SIGINT is the capacity to detect radar and telemetry signals from enemy weapons systems. Such detections allow identification of the used weapons system (each system has its own 'signature'). They also allow, according to remarks by the then NRO director Bruce Carlson in a speech from September 2010 at the National Space Symposium, geolocation of the source of this radar signal (in the case of MH17: geolocation of the Target Acquisition Radar of the launch unit).

The US military has a number of SIGINT systems in several types of orbits: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) below 1500 km which allows coverage of a few minutes during a pass over a target; and Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) and geosynchronous orbit (GEO), which allow to monitor targets for many hours (HEO) to continuously (GEO) from distances of 36 000+ km.

France has a number of SIGINT satellites in LEO. China no doubt has SIGINT satellites too, as does Russia. For the moment I will focus on the US systems. I must ad that I did check the French systems as well but none of the French systems (ESSAIM and Elisa, both in LEO) had sight of the Ukraine at that time.

The US systems, under the catch-all codename ORION, include the TRUMPET-FO which move in HEO. One of them is USA 184, mentioned before in the discussion of SBIRS as it has a piggyback SBIRS capacity in addition to its main SIGINT role.

There are also the big MENTOR satellites in GEO, plus two MERCURY satellites also in GEO, and the older VORTEX system. Of these systems, TRUMPET-FO, MENTOR and MERCURY are certainly still active based on their orbital behaviour.

The map below shows the positions of those satellites in this series for which we have enough tracking data to allow a reconstruction of their positions and footprints on 17 July 2014, 13:20 UT and which had the MH17 crash area within potential view:

click map to enlarge

Again: this does NOT necessarily mean that all of these satellites were actively monitoring the Ukraine at that time. Quite a number of them will have been tasked on the Middle East.

Yet, given the strong NATO interest in events in the Ukraine at that time, notably the rising concern about advanced surface-to-air missile systems following the shootdown of a Ukrainian Antonov-26 a few days earlier, I would be surprised if none of them monitored the Ukraine at all.


A clarification note on the position of USA 184 (SIGINT/SBIRS)

In my position paper written for the Dutch Parliament Foreign Affairs committee meeting coming Friday, I included this map with the positions of three SBIRS satellites with view on the Ukraine at that time:

click map to enlarge

I should point out here that there is some leeway in the exact position of USA 184, depending on whether it made a corrective manoeuvre to maintain its Mean Motion of about 2.00615 revolutions/day or not since the day we last observed it.

If it did, its position would be slightly more westward compared to the position depicted above, i.e. in a position just north of Scotland rather than above the Norwegian coast:

Let me be clear: this does NOT influence the conclusions of my position paper: the MH17 crash site in both variants is well within the field of view as seen from USA 184, i.e. the satellite could potentially provide both Infra-red and SIGINT detections. In the interest of accuracy, I thought I should however mention it here.


Acknowledgement -  I thank Mike McCants (USA) and Ted Molczan (Canada) for discussions about satellite positions, notably concerning USA 184.

Parliament hearing MH17, 22 Januari 2016

On 22 January 2016, the permanent committee on Foreign Affairs of Dutch Parliament will hold a full day of hearings/round table talks related to the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on 17 July 2014. The hearings are in preparation for a debate about the Dutch Government's reactions to and actions with regard to the ongoing investigations into the disaster.

On the invitation of MP Pieter Omtzigt, I have been invited as an external expert to this hearing. The committee members want to get informed regarding the possibility of foreign (notably US) Space-Based military observations of the event, i.e. satellite observations by systems such as SBIRS. This is a topic I have covered earlier on this blog.

The agenda of the hearing (in Dutch) is here. On request of the committee, I have written a brief position paper on the topic (again: in Dutch) which can be found here.

Video of the hearing will be live-streamed through this link. My contribution is scheduled for 12:00-13:00 CET (11:00-12:00 GMT).

SBIRS, SIGINT and the MH17 tragedy (updated)

Yesterday 17 July near 13:15 UT, 298 people including at least 173 189 192 of my countrymen perished when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed over the eastern Ukraine, reportedly after being hit by a missile.

This is a terrible tragedy. Among the victims are complete families, including children. It is the start of the holidays in the Netherlands, and the flight carried many Dutch families on their way to their holiday destinations in southeast Asia. My thoughts are with these highly stricken families.

For me personally, it is an unnerving fact that I was about to fly the same route from Amsterdam to southeast Asia only a few days later.

In the wake of the incident, accusations fly between the Ukrainians, pro-Russian separatists and Russians, all accusing each other of being responsible for this tragedy. At the moment it is difficult to say which bits of information floating around are true and which are false. I strongly suspect that the current suspicion against Russian-backed separatists will hold though. Some less ambiguous evidence (e.g. the location of the crash, which is close to the locations where separatists earlier downed two other (military) aircraft) certainly seem to suggest this. But we will see: at the moment, nothing is certain.

Of interest to this blog, is that US Intelligence officials have confirmed that the aircraft was hit by a surface-to-air missile, according to several US media. Senior US officials appear to have told CNN that they detected a radar signal from a surface-to-air missile system being turned on right before the crash, and that they also detected a 'heat signature' at the time the aircraft was lost.

If the CNN report is correct, it is highly likely that the 'heat signature' detection was a space-born detection by the SBIRS system of infra-red early warning satellites. I have written about this satellite system before, in the context of that other recent tragedy with a Malaysian Airlines flight, the disappeared flight MH370.

click image to enlarge

Three of the four SBIRS satellites, SBIRS GEO 1 (2011-019A) and SBIRS GEO 2 (2013-011A) in geostationary orbit and USA 184 (2006-027A) in HEO, had coverage of the area where MH17 went down at the time this happened (17 July 14:15 GMT, see image above).

SBIRS and SIGINT platform USA 184, imaged on 20 March 2014

SBIRS GEO 2 imaged on 20 June 2014

It is possible that the quoted detection of a missile radar tracking system activation around the time of the disaster was done by satellites too. Several SIGINT and ELINT satellites cover this area, including various MENTOR (ORION) satellites and one MERCURY satellite in GEO, and USA 184, which is both a TRUMPET-FO SIGINT satellite and a SBIRS platform, in HEO. That these SIGINT satellites amongst others serve to detect and monitor signals from military radar and missile systems, is known. Given the interest of the USA and NATO in closely watching military developments in the Ukraine conflict, it is almost certain that some of these are targetting the area.

The question is, whether these satellites can help pinpoint the location from where the missile was launched, and hence provide an indication of who did it (Ukrainian forces, separatist militia, or the Russians).

I suspect they can. If the SIGINT detections were indeed done by satellites, it is known that the US recently made large progress in geolocating the origin of detected signals. In a speech from September 2010 available on the NRO website, NRO director Bruce Carlson specifically remarked on the NRO's increasing capability to geolocate using SIGINT:

"I will tell you that just in the last 24 months, we’ve improved the accuracy of geo-location by nearly an order of magnitude, and we’re going to continue to do that and bring it down. We’re getting to the point where here very, very shortly, within the very near term, we will be able to target using signals intelligence". 

If they indeed have a SIGINT detection of the missile's radar system (and the CNN quote seems to say that), the character of the signature might yield information on what missile system was used (i.e. if it was indeed an SA-17/BUK).

Likewise, and although as far as I know no exact public information is available on the accuracy of this kind of detections (update: but see the update at the end of this post!) , I suspect that the  'heat signature' detections of the missile launch,  if indeed SBIRS infra-red detections, are also accurate enough to geolocate the launch site (and whether that is in Ukranian held, or separatist held territory).

A SBIRS platform has two sensors: one in staring mode, and one in scanning mode. The staring scanning mode sensor watches for heat signatures over a wide semi-global area. The scanning staring sensor targets specific regions, and when the staring scanning sensor detects a signature, the scanning staring sensor (at least according to some sources) can be employed to further pinpoint and track this event (more sources amongst others here, here and here). The goal of SBIRS reportedly is to be able to track launches, pinpoint launch sites and accurately predict potential target locations from the tracking data. That needs quite accurate tracking.

(note added: a 1-hour timezone conversion error in the original version of this post has been corrected)

Update 19/07/2014: Daniel Fischer managed to dig up this unclassified presentation from 2006, which shows that SBIRS indeed can detect SAM. Pages 2 and 3 mention the capability to pinpoint the launch location. 

Rainer Kresken has raised the legitimate question of the cloud cover present at the time of the shootdown. Water vapour obscures Infra Red, which means the cloud cover might have blocked detection of the initial launch phase of the SAM. The SIGINT detection of the missile system radar does not suffer from this problem.

Open Question: Could US Military SIGINT satellites help to narrow down flight MH370's last location?

Please note: this post contains discussions of a highly speculative nature

Over the past days, it has become clear that the lost Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has flown on for some 7 hours after contact was lost at 17:20 UT (March 7 UT, local March 8). This information comes from radio "ping-backs" of the aircraft's ACARS system received by the Inmarsat 3-F1 satellite, a geostationary communications satellite that is located at longitude 64 E over the Indian Ocean. These ping-backs were received hours after the last radio contact with the pilots and hours after the transponder was shut off, and indicate that the aircraft was still powered and 'alive' hours after it disappeared. A well written story at the CNN website gives backgrounds on the receptions and the system.

Position and footprint of Inmarsat 3-F1
click image to enlarge

In this post, I will briefly summarize how Inmarsat 3-F1 detected the aircraft and determined a wide arc where the aircraft could have been at that time. I will then explore whether additional signal receipts by classified US Military Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) satellites might perhaps have been possible. If such additional receptions exist (an open question!) they would enable to further narrow down the location of the last ping-back.

That will largely be a theoretical exercise, as so far there has been no word that the US SIGINT satellite constellation did detect these ping-backs. This post therefore entails a clear element of speculation, and the central question remains an explicit open question.


Backgrounds: 'Marco Polo' between an aircraft and a satellite

Someone in the aircraft shut off the radar transponder beacon and the active ACARS messaging system near 17:20 UT. Yet this did not fully disable the ACARS system. The system kept answering periodic "pings" by the Inmarsat 3-F1 (1996-020A) satellite. These "pings", basically a kind of "Marco?" message,  are periodically sent out by the satellite and when received by the aircraft ACARS antenna, the aircraft pings back a brief "handshake" basically saying "Polo!". While such a handshake does not contain clear information about where the aircraft is when the active ACARS is disabled, it does contain the aircraft ID.

According to press reports, the last ping-back from flight MH370 was received 7 hours after the flight disappeared, near 00:11 UT on March 8. Apparently, only Inmarsat 3-F1 received these ping-backs.

From the time it took the radio-ping to travel from Inmarsat 3-F1 to the aircraft and then back again, the distance (but not direction) of the aircraft to the satellite can be determined. For example, at a radiowave speed of 300 000 km/s, a time difference of say 0.2 seconds between Inmarsat sending the ping and receiving the answer back, indicates the aircraft is at a distance of 30 000 km from the satellite.

Once you know the distance, you can draw a globe with that radius around the location of the Inmarsat satellite. Where that globe cuts the earth surface, it creates a circle, centred on the sub-satellite point. The aircraft must have been somewhere on that circle. This is basically how the wide arc that has been published was constructed, an arc which runs from Thailand to Kazakhstan in the north, and Indonesia to Australia and the Indian Ocean in the south. The aircraft could have been anywhere on that big arc, an area stretching thousands of kilometers.

To pinpoint the aircraft more accurately to a particular spot in the arc, one needs a detection by a second and preferably a third satellite.


Could US SIGINT satellites provide additional receptions for these pings?

One source of such additional ping-back signal receptions, in theory could be one of several Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) satellites employed by the US military. Please note that I say IN THEORY as the US government hasn't provided any statements that they did (which might indicate that they didn't). In other words: I am speculating on an open question here.

It depends on a lot of factors, not the least of which are questions whether these satellites were listening at the time, and whether they were monitoring the particular VHF/UHF radiofrequencies in question. Those are questions I do not have the answers to. What I will do, is discuss which US military satellites could potentially have received these ping-backs because they had coverage of the area.

1. The Mentor and Trumpet SIGINT satellites

Two US SIGINT systems in high orbits cover(ed) the relevant area: (1) several of the very large Mentor/Advanced Orion SIGINT satellites in geostationary orbit: and (2) one of the SBIRS/TRUMPET combined SIGINT and SBIRS satellites which moves in a Highly Elliptical Orbit and hovered high above the northern hemisphere at the time.

These SIGINT satellites serve to eavesdrop on radio communications including satellite- and mobile telephony, missile telemetry and signals from groundbased and airborne radar systems.

USA 184 TRUMPET imaged on 25 Aug 2009 by the author

 Mentor 4 imaged on 18 Nov 2012 by the author

The TRUMPET satellite in HEO which had coverage of (a part of) the area at that time is  USA 184 (2006-027A). The geostationary Mentor satellites covering the area are Mentor 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (1995-022A, 2003-041A, 2009-001A, 2010-063A and 2012-034A).

Position of various Mentor satellites and TRUMPET USA 184

Mentor satellite footprints

USA 184 area coverage and footprint detail
click image to enlarge

2. NOSS (Naval Ocean Surveillance System) SIGINT satellites

Apart from the Mentor and Trumpet SIGINT satellites in high orbits, the US also operates a series of SIGINT satellites with accurate geolocalization capabilities in a Low Earth Orbit. It concerns the US Navy Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellites, of which there are several. They operate in close pairs, orbiting at an altitude of about 1000 x 1200 km in 63 degree inclined orbits. Their main purpose is to locate and track shipping through the radio communications of the latter.

A NOSS duo (NOSS 3-4) imaged by the author on 29 Jan 2011

Two duo's of NOSS satellites were covering the northern half of the area at the time of the last ping-back received by Inmarsat 3-F1: the NOSS 3-5 and NOSS 3-6 duo's (2011-014A and B and 2012-048A and P).

The NOSS 3-6 duo had the best coverage, which includes the full northern arc from Thailand to Kazakhstan determined by the Inmarsat reception:

click images to enlarge

position of the NOSS 3-5 and NOSS 3-6 duo at the time of the last pingback

in 3D: yellow arc is where the aircraft could be according to the Inmarsat 3-F1 reception

Chinese SIGINT

China operates a satellite system similar to the US NOSS, consisting of three satellite trio's in the Yaogan series (Yaogan 9A, B, C; 16A, B, C; 17A, B, C). None of these however had coverage of the relevant areas in the Indian Ocean, central Asia or southern Eurasia at that time.

Coverage summary

From the brief satellite coverage analysis summed up above, it seems that the northern overland arc from Thailand to Kazakhstan was potentially well covered by various US military SIGINT satellites: five Mentor satellites, a TRUMPET and a NOSS duo. The southern Indian Ocean arc is slightly less well covered (no TRUMPET or NOSS coverage) but was nevertheless in view of several geostationary Mentor SIGINT satellites.

The question now is: could one or more of these SIGINT satellites have captured the same ACARS ping-backs received by Inmarsat 3-F1? If so, the combination of their data with the Inmarsat data could potentially narrow down the last known position of the aircraft considerably.

It all depends on whether the satellites in question were actively listening at that time, and moreover, whether their monitoring includes the radio frequencies in which the ACARS ping-backs of flight MH370 operated. It perhaps also includes questions like whether any signals received are all kept on file, or if some selection is made and much deemed of no interest is directly discarded.

Those are some big serious "ifs", that I simply do not know the answers to: this stuff is, after all, classified. So far, the US government has not indicated that one of their SIGINT systems did capture the ping-backs. Which might mean that they didn't, as I can't imagine that they did not check for it.

Classified SIGINT satellite positions in this post (and previous posts) are based on orbits calculated by Mike McCants, based on amateur observations communicated on the SeeSat-L mailing list.

Addendum 18 March 2014:
In my initial analysis posted 17/03/2014, I forgot to include two other and older geostationary US SIGINT satellites: the two Mercury/ADVANCED VORTEX satellites that are located over East Africa.

 click images to enlarge

It concerns Mercury 1  (1994-054A) and Mercury 2 (1996-026A). Both satellites were recently moved to a new orbital position over East Africa and are station-keeping there, indicating they are operational. Their footprint includes the area of interest, although the southern Indian Ocean arc is close to the edge of their coverage.

Mercury 1 imaged by the author on 29 Dec 2013

On Dutch national TV, about lost flight Malaysian Airlines MH370 and satellites

My previous blog post "Satellites and Malaysian Airlines flight MH370" garnered some attention. I was called by an editor of 'Nieuwsuur' ("News Hour"), a major news show on Dutch national TV channel 2, if I was willing to explain something about it in an item on their news show (broadcast nationwide daily at 22:00 CET).

So yesterday afternoon I was visited by an interviewer and a cameraman, for an item broadcast yesterday evening. Below is a video of the item (it is in Dutch of course): I appear at 3:08 and again at 4:25 in the video.


In the item I briefly talk about the use of SBIRS to look for a mid-air explosion; and that I expect the US military to use their optical reconnaissance satellites to image every suitable landing strip within operational reach of the aircraft.

Other experts in the item are the Volkel Air Force base commander and fighter pilot Peter Tankink and TU University Aerospace researcher and pilot Alexander in 't Veld.

This is the second time I appear in Nieuwsuur: a year ago I was live in their broadcast in an item on the Chelyabinsk meteorite/asteroid impact (see my post here).