Could a massive passenger jet slip past radar, cross international borders and land undetected?
That's a key question investigators are weighing as they continue the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished March 8 on a flight between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing.
Radar does have some blind spots, and it's possible to fly at lower altitudes to avoid being spotted, analysts told CNN.
But experts are divided over whether that could be what happened to the missing Boeing 777.
Jeffrey Beatty, a security consultant and former FBI special agent, says someone could have planned a route that avoided radar detection.
"It certainly is possible to fly through the mountains in that part of the world and not be visible on radar. Also, an experienced pilot, anyone who wanted to go in that direction, could certainly plot out all the known radar locations, and you can easily determine, where are the radar blind spots?" he said. "It's the type of things the Americans did when they went into Pakistan to go after Osama bin Laden."
On Monday, the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times reported that the plane may have flown low to the ground -- 5,000 feet or less -- and used mountainous terrain as cover to evade radar detection. The newspaper cited unnamed sources for its reporting, which CNN could not immediately confirm.
And a senior Indian military official told CNN on Monday that military radar near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands isn't as closely watched as other radar systems. That leaves open the possibility that Indian radar systems may not have picked up the airplane at the time of its last known Malaysian radar contact, near the tiny island of Palau Perak in the Strait of Malacca.
U.S. officials have said they don't think it's likely the plane flew north over land as it veered off course. If it had, they've said, radar somewhere would have detected it. Landing the plane somewhere also seems unlikely, since that would require a large runway, refueling capability and the ability to fix the plane, the officials have said.
Malaysian officials said Monday that they were not aware of the Malaysian newspaper's report.
From BEN Latest News: www.benlatestnews.com
Follow us on Twitter: @benlatestnews
0 comments:
Post a Comment