Since my eldest brother helped set up the base in Alert in the late fifties, another brother commanded an area of DEW Line bases in the seventies and a third brother was a tech on the Pine Tre Line in the sixties, yes, I'd say I know about the radar coverage in the Arctic.
However, if you think radar coverage world wide is as intense as that in the Arctic during the Cold War, I'm afraid you are in for a disappointment.

I disagree with your theory of a cover up.

Best
Les

Conspiracy can't be excluded. While it may be farfetched it's as good as any other explanation given what evidence we have to date.

No one knew that four planes would be hijacked the same day and flown into buildings so stealing one and hiding it somewhere doesn't strike me as being that absurd today.

Conspiracy to what end?

...but sooo far removed from day to day reality.

I managed a lot of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) programs for the USN, was even teamed with Australia for a particular maritime program.

There are simply parts of the world that are not covered 24/7 by any ISR asset, let alone a US platform: We focus our assets on known and emerging threats.

The tyranny of distance in the Asia/Pacific Theater is daunting.

I will say, and again I have yet to see this addressed: What was the "lost aircraft/lost comm" protocol for the en-route controllers and what was the response from them when the 777 went dark?

Who did they call per the protocol and what was the sequence of events from there? It should all be recorded and available: Who knew what when?

Puzzling? They sure are spending lots of manpower and resource dollars to try and find this thing. Another ship here and submersible their and it adds up. Someone has to be paying the bill.

I have to keep in mind that these waters are some of the most treacherous on the planet. The roaring forties, between the latitudes of 40 and 50 degrees. Least we forget the "furious fifties" or the "screaming sixities" between the African Cape of Good Hope and Southern Australia and Antartica. The shortest and fastest route to circumnavigate the globe.

If the Malaysian pilot did decide to end it all, with no trace this vast area would be choice given depths, distances from land and sea conditions. Winter is setting in and time is running out. It already ran out!

But like so many, I do believe that something else went on here. The Maldives citizen eye witness accounts of seeing the jet fly low over the islands late at night, the so called mystery phone call from that American (Philip Wood) traced to the island of Diego Garcia, etc, etc. Leaves much to the imagination. Why is CNN televising coverage with the same repetitive crap? Is the US Government behind that? And for what reason? To keep our focus strictly down under?! Its become fourth page news now.

One of the most astute posts in this thread, based on someone with experience.

The real cover-up is likely surrounding the answers generated by the above post, not a massive conspiracy to deflect the public away from the plane itself or the motive (if ever discovered) for its loss. The apparent lack of protocol from several nations and their military/civilian air controllers is scandalous, at best. If there is a cover-up, it's being perpetuated by separate nations to CYA with regard to a failure of following international and national protocols for safety and defense of their air spaces. It doesn't help us find the plane or understand why it was diverted, but it explains why the investigation is so inept and smacks of deception.

if i was ever in danger of taking anything you said seriously, i am well clear of that now.

Yea Punk, like I give a crap what you think.......
Keep depending on the hot ice cream fro your goberment.....LOL

Enough citty chat Burner. Tell us more about your Conspiracy Theory. The one you can just feel.

Enquiring minds want to know.

A robotic submarine looking for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet is expected to finish searching a patch of the Indian Ocean seabed within a week after so far coming up empty, and the search area may be expanded after that, officials said Saturday.

As the hunt for Flight 370 hit the six-week mark, the Bluefin 21 unmanned sub began its seventh trip into the depths off the coast of western Australia. Its search area forms a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) circle around the location of an underwater signal that was believed to have come from the aircraft's black boxes before their batteries died. The sonar scan of the seafloor in that area is expected to be completed in five to seven days, the search center said in an email to The Associated Press.

The U.S. Navy sub has covered around 133 square kilometers (51 square miles) since it began diving into the depths on Monday. The latest data are being analyzed, but nothing has yet been identified.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur that the weekend search is crucial.

"The narrowing of the search for today and tomorrow is at a very critical juncture, so I appeal to everybody around the world to pray and pray hard that we find something to work on over the next couple of days," he said.

But he added that there were no plans to give up once the Bluefin concludes its work. Instead, he said the scope of the search may be broadened or other assets may be used.

"The search will always continue," he said. "It is just a matter of approach. All efforts will be intensified for the next few days with regards to the underwater search."

Meanwhile on Saturday, up to 11 aircraft and 12 ships continued to scan the ocean surface for debris from the Boeing 777 that disappeared March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Radar and satellite data show the plane mysteriously veered far off course for unknown reasons and would have run out of fuel in the remote section of the southern Indian Ocean where the search has been focused. Not one piece of debris has been recovered since the massive hunt began.

The tiresome search, which continues to raise more questions than answers, has tormented the families whose loved ones were aboard Flight 370. About two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese.

On Friday, around three dozen Chinese relatives held a prayer meeting in Beijing for their missing spouses. Many sobbed heavily as candles burned on a table in the shape of a heart with "MH370" in the middle. A banner behind them read in Chinese: "Husband, wife, come home soon."

There have been numerous leads throughout the painstaking hunt, but all have turned out to be false. The latest hope involved an oil slick found near the underwater search area, but analysis of a sample taken from the site found it was not connected to the plane.

The most promising development came when four underwater signals were detected April 5 and 8. The sounds were consistent with pings that would have been emanating from the flight data and cockpit recorders' beacons before their batteries died.

The underwater operation is being complicated by the depth of the largely unexplored silt-covered sea floor. The U.S. Navy's unmanned submarine has gone beyond its recommended limit of 4,500 meters (15,000 feet), according to the U.S. 7th Fleet. That could risk the equipment, but it is being closely monitored.

The search coordination center has said the hunt for floating debris on the surface will continue at least into next week, even though the head of the search effort, Angus Houston, had earlier said it was expected to end sooner.

On Saturday, the visual surface search was to cover an estimated 50,200 square kilometers (19,382 square miles) of sea.

Perhaps the Easter Bunny will find the plane while he's hiding Easter eggs. :D

Who is paying for all this searching?

We're just printing more to cover it. No problem.

Still seems odd that after all these weeks and all the resources spent searching, that not a single shred of evidence has been identified anywhere. Nothing. I know it's a big ocean, but by now, you'd think something would have floated to the surface and been spotted by one of the thousands of sorties spent just looking. Very frustrating, especially for those with loved ones still unaccounted for.

It is arm chair quarter backing like this that makes me laugh. People just make stuff up when they do not know. You seriously think the world as a whole is unders surveillance? You think the almighty American government runs surveillance on every commercial flight in case somethign like this happens? You say show y ou an air space not under 24/7 surveillance, I bet less than a percent of the earths surface is under round the clock surveillance.
Just like CNN, filling dead air with garbage. People complain about the information coming forth, but every one is just making up facts at random and thus have totally burried any actual info.

Where am i wrong?

Your assumption that the southern Indian Ocean is under radar coverage is obviously in error.
If there is no perceived threat, no one spends assets to cover that area. This is not a difficult concept.

Best
Les

You are overestimating the surveillance capabilities world wide. Surveillance costs money, they only direct it where there is an interest. Oceans that don't happen to have a battlegroup currently plowing the waves would be an area of disinterest likely not covered by any surveillance.

Last i knew the US Navy had sunken buoys with all sorts of tracking listening devises on them and that was 20 years ago. !

I do have to wonder if it might have flown into one of the Australian radars that sweeps NW, off of the coast of Australia. From what I have seen of their coverage maps, it seems like the plane should have flown through their coverage from the radar based at Laverton.

JR

It's interesting that the plane would have had to have flown just about right over top of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to get to it's suspected location. You would figure that their radar might have picked up a strange plane with no transponder signaling. They have a fairly modern paved 8,000 ft runway.