Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl
As far as is publicly known, only Malaysian military is saying they saw anything on radar, somewhere around the time that it was crossing over Malaysia going west. The contact wasn't identified as the plane, or recognized as significant at the time, it appears.
Other countries have not said they detected the plane on their military radar. It may not have come within their radar coverage, or their military radar may not be that effective.
If the plane was far out to sea in the Indian ocean, not flying toward a coastline or a militarily sensitive area or a major naval vessel, or was flying low, my impression (only that) is that it is reasonably possible it wasn't detected. It also seems to me that another country's military might have limited incentive to disclose their radar capabilities, or the inadequacies of same, merely to help find a civilian plane from another country.
We (meaning layfolk like me) have certain impressions about the capabilities of US military air defenses, which may considerably overstate the realities of other countries' defenses.
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1. flying low means increased fuel consumption = less range
2. the US navy has assets in the Indian ocean, i highly doubt every one of them would have there radars off, so there is a good chance we could have picked it up if it went that way.
however, there is more then a few arguments for us not telling anyone we saw it, a. maybe that asset was doing something not particularly clean, and we want to keep it quiet, or b. we don't want to tell everyone ho good our radar is.