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MAGIC, Aurora and Boeing/NRL patents drop from the paper trail in 2014

Follow-up briefing: Aurora’s remote-operation work for the US military from about 2010; MAGIC and several Boeing and NRL patents then become hard to find in open documents in 2014. Redacted Blue Devil letters are shown with matching date cut-offs.

Is Flight 370 still sending signals?

CNN · 13 March 2014 · 2:09

Week-one report, before the 15 March Inmarsat southern-arc briefing. Captures the live confusion over whether the aircraft was still electrically alive.

USAF, Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Kratos — 2014 contractors plate

Published collage naming USAF and four prime contractors against the MH370 date. Nic’s caption: the US military exercise around MH370 has not been fully accounted for in public.

USAF: Gorgon Stare Increment 2 ‘tried operationally’

Air & Space Forces · 7 April 2014 · Col Brandon Baker

A named USAF official puts Increment 2 operational-trial activity by early April 2014. It does not establish airborne availability on 7–8 March.

RegicideAnon satellite-video upload — 19 May 2014

Public upload date archivable; claimed 12 March receipt is not verified by that fact

Confirmed public-upload date. Description’s claimed ‘received 12 March 2014’ remains a separate, unverified field. Provenance of the file itself is still the core video question.

Najib Razak

Prime Minister of Malaysia, 2014

On 24 March 2014 announced that MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean with no survivors, based on Inmarsat’s then-new analysis.

CTBTO HA08 North at Diego Garcia went dark in March 2014

Cable break ~189 km offshore · South array kept listening

Confirmed by CTBTO. The northern hydroacoustic segment of HA08, off Diego Garcia, suffered a trunk-cable fault in March 2014 about 189–190 km from shore, more than a kilometre and a half down. HA08 South continued. North stayed silent for twelve years. A conventional splash in the southern Indian Ocean is not thereby erased — Cape Leeuwin (HA01) and HA08 South remained in the network.

USAF PB2020 — MAGIC/Orion continued after 2014

PE 0305205F · Congressional adds FY2015–FY2018

MAGIC/Orion did not fade from the budget after 2014. Adds: $20m FY2015, $5m FY2016, $50m FY2017, $40m FY2018, on top of $19m FY2012 and $50m FY2013. Post-2016 money was for airworthiness, cybersecurity, interoperability and mission capability toward a deployable Block 1 Orion.

What can be documented at Diego Garcia on 7–8 March 2014?

HA08 North’s trunk failed in March 2014 about 189 km off Diego Garcia; UCT-2 was on the atoll doing near-shore HDAS anode work in 110 ft of water. Sensor, SIGINT, satellite-downlink and aircraft records for 7–8 March are still the question — not a finding.

What sensors were actually on Orion by March 2014?

Orion was selected as MAGIC’s multi-day, multi-sensor ISR aircraft. First flight had no mission system; flight 18 (Dec 2014) carried ballast. Those two points do not empty the aircraft. Sorties 2–17, including March 2014, are the hole. Gorgon Stare / MTS-B / VADER remain live leads, not closed fits.

MAGIC/Orion continued in USAF development after 2014

Confirmed by PB2020. Congressional adds through FY2018. The ‘faded after 2014’ formulation is a correction, not a secrecy finding.

Was Gorgon Stare Increment 2 operational on 8 March 2014?

Sierra Nevada (1 Jul 2014): deployed to Afghanistan ‘earlier this year’ and at IOC. Air & Space Forces (7 Apr 2014): Col Brandon Baker — second iteration ‘has been tried operationally’ and would undergo a six-month evaluation. Mercury SEC: 18-month QRC delivery from a 2011 win. None of these pin 7–8 March.

What was on Orion flights 2–17 between August 2013 and March 2014?

First flight: no mission system. Flight 18 (Dec 2014): ballast. The MH370-relevant interval is the unlisted sorties in between, plus whether the ‘second flight series’ PB2015 said was being scheduled had begun by 8 March.

Blue Devil, MAGIC, Orion, BIG SAFARI — 2014 window

Briefing collages, 18 September 2026

Nic Moneypenny published investigation collages placing Blue Devil (including an egg-shaped airship), MAGIC, Aurora Orion, BIG SAFARI, Lockheed and DARPA in the same 2013–14 spending window as MH370, with Freescale’s last gyro presentation among the plates.

Boeing–NAVAIR delivery order signed 4 March 2014

$955,853.54 · N0001914D0012 · engineering/technical support · St Louis

Confirmed public contracting record, four days before MH370. Department of the Navy, Naval Air Systems Command, NAICS aircraft manufacturing, PSC R425 professional engineering/technical support. Subject of the order is not in the public header. Chronology is not a collection event.

US military presence in theatre, 7–9 March 2014

Public-source board · confirmed search assets vs records still needed

Working chart of publicly documented US assets around MH370: USS Pinckney already in the South China Sea and diverted to search on 8 March; a Kadena P-3C announced the same day; USS Kidd joined. Guam RQ-4, Diego Garcia sensors, EP-3E, RC-135 and exact 7–9 March sortie lists remain open. Presence is not the same as tracking 9M-MRO.

ATSB underwater search box 2014–2017

~120,000 km² · suspended 17 January 2017

High-resolution seabed search along a refined 7th-arc corridor. No wreckage.

Blue Devil I operational demonstration ends

31 December 2013 · four King Airs returning to Leidos

Attributed via Inside the Air Force, 22 Jan 2014, quoting USAF officials. The four leased King Airs were returning to Leidos, so the original Afghanistan fleet was not an operational candidate on 8 March 2014. The multi-INT sensor package remained US Government property and was being assessed for reassignment (MC-12 and MQ-9 mentioned, not selected). The sensors did not disappear with the lease.

Cubic remote-pilot patent was maintained through March 2014

US6641087B1: 4-year fee 4 May 2007, 8-year fee 4 May 2011, expired 4 Nov 2015 for later non-payment. Continuation US10/684,316 abandoned 18 Jan 2007. IP interest retained; prototype/certification still OPEN.

JORN not tasked the night of 7–8 March 2014

Australian over-the-horizon radar · peacetime status

Wikipedia and Australian statements: Jindalee Operational Radar Network was not operational / not tasked that night. Absence of a JORN track is not a northern-path proof.

Where is the 14 February 2014 USD(I)/USAF Gorgon Stare / Blue Devil strategy report?

HASC 113-102 required it 22 days before MH370. It may name platforms, residual Blue Devil components, integration status and fielding chronology.

Where was the Blue Devil I government-owned sensor package in January–March 2014?

Aircraft gone; sensors remaining as government property, being assessed for reassignment. Destination on 8 March is open — including Orion, MQ-9, MC-12, or another host. Not shown, and not ruled out.

Wikipedia timeline — night of 7–8 March 2014

Duty sign-in through failed 09:15 handshake

Compiled public chronology: captain sign-in 22:50 MYT 7 March, F/O 23:15, SDU log-on 00:00, push 00:27, takeoff 00:42, FL350 01:01, last ACARS 01:07, last voice 01:19:30, transponder 01:21:13, Penang cell 01:52, last radar 02:22, SDU log-on 02:25, hourly pings, last transmission 08:19:37, no reply 09:15.

HASC Report 113-102 — Gorgon Stare to recapitalise Blue Devil

House Armed Services Committee · 7 June 2013 · USD(I)/USAF report due 14 Feb 2014

Primary Congressional source: Gorgon Stare is the USAF’s only operational persistent day/night WAMI capability and the logical programme to recapitalise Blue Devil technologies, capabilities and lessons learned. Directed evolution into WAMI + near-vertical direction-finding SIGINT, leveraging Blue Devil PED. Report due 14 February 2014 — 22 days before MH370.

West-track disclosure lag — ministerial 10:30, ARCC 22:30, Thai 9–10 days

8 March and 18–19 March 2014

Hishammuddin 1 May 2014: military radar playback ~08:30 MYT 8 March, Air Force ops ~09:00, minister informed ~10:30 of a possible turn-back; a military aircraft west at 10:54. KL ARCC was not informed by RMAF of the western last-known until 22:30 MYT — a roughly 12-hour operational gap. Thai Surat Thani radar disclosed 18–19 March.

Australia leads the southern search

March 2014 onward

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre coordinates a vast surface search, then an underwater search, in the southern Indian Ocean.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau

Lead of the 2014–2017 southern Indian Ocean search

Drew and exhausted the 120,000 km² underwater box. Operational-search report is the engineering baseline for later Ocean Infinity boxes.

Investigation networks spear-phished the day after MH370 vanished

CyberSecurity Malaysia · ~30 PCs · disclosed 20 August 2014

Confirmed as CSM’s public account. On 9 March, officials at the Department of Civil Aviation, the National Security Council and Malaysia Airlines were sent malware disguised as a news article that the aircraft had been found. About thirty computers were infected. Outbound mail carrying confidential files, including meeting minutes and classified documents, some related to MH370, was traced to an IP in China. CSM shut the machines down and asked Chinese providers to block the traffic. Police and Interpol were involved. What exactly was stolen is still unpublished.

Malaysia announces the southern Indian Ocean track

15 March 2014

Prime Minister Najib Razak states that new satellite data show MH370 flew for hours into the southern Indian Ocean. The search pivots.

MH370 departs Kuala Lumpur

16:42 UTC · 00:42 MYT 8 March 2014

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777-2H6ER registered 9M-MRO, takes off from KLIA runway 32R bound for Beijing Capital International Airport with 227 passengers and 12 crew.

MyCERT: MH370-themed backdoor and fake-transcript spear-phish

MA-381 · 24 March 2014 · MA-386 · 18 April 2014

Confirmed public advisories, a different campaign from the 9 March official-network intrusion. 24 March: a Facebook-app lure dropping a backdoor with remote-control (C2) capability. 18 April: emails posing as an investigation team / ICAO portal item, password-protected archive, fake MH370 transcript, command-and-control. Aimed at organisations and the public, not shown to be the DCA/NSC/MAS breach.

Orion 80-hour remotely controlled flight

December 2014 · 1,000 lb ballast · fuel for ~37 more hours

Contractor-confirmed endurance after MH370. This was flight 18 and carried 1,000 lb of ballast. Shows the air vehicle matured; does not rewind payload status to March.

Orion flight 18 — 80-hour record with 1,000 lb ballast

December 2014 · not an ISR-payload demonstration

Aurora’s endurance attempt was flight 18 and carried 1,000 lb of ballast. Maiden flight (no mission system) and this record flight both fail as evidence of an operational ISR stack. Payload on flights 2–17 remains open.

Surface search begins in the South China Sea

8 March 2014

Ships and aircraft search the Gulf of Thailand / South China Sea along the filed route — the wrong ocean for several days.

The Operational Search for MH370

ATSB AE-2014-054 · final search report 2017

Australia’s account of how the southern Indian Ocean search box was drawn, refined, and exhausted over 120,000 km². Primary technical home of the 7th-arc argument used in the field.

The Search for MH370 — Journal of Navigation

Ashton, Dickinson, Hall, Roberts, Smith · Inmarsat · 2014/15

The paper that showed how BTO and BFO from routine signalling units can reconstruct a long flight the airline did not know it still had.

Towed-pinger detections — not MH370

April 2014

Acoustic detections in the search area are investigated with an AUV. No wreckage is found. The detections are not attributed to 9M-MRO’s recorders.

UCT-2 inspected near-shore HDAS cables at Diego Garcia

February–early March 2014 · 110 ft of water · zinc anodes

Confirmed Seabee deployment. Construction Diving Detachment Charlie spent February and early March at NSF Diego Garcia on fleet moorings and Hydro-acoustic Data Acquisition System cables. Final task: inspect and repair two HDAS cables north of the lagoon in about 110 feet of seawater. That is not the 189 km / 1.5 km-deep HA08 North trunk.

USS Pinckney (DDG 91) diverted from South China Sea training to search

7th Fleet · 8 March 2014 · two MH-60R embarked

Confirmed. Pinckney was already at sea in the South China Sea on a training and maritime-security task, then ordered toward Vietnam’s southern coast after MH370 was missing. Helicopters flew search sorties from 9 March. Pre-search combat-system logs are not public.

Bathymetry and underwater search begin

October 2014

Fugro vessels and partners begin wide-area bathymetric mapping and towed-sonar search of a defined 7th-arc corridor.

CyberSecurity Malaysia

National cyber agency · publicly described the 9 March intrusion in August 2014

Confirmed. Agency under the then Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. CEO Amirudin Abdul Wahab is the named source for the 9 March spear-phish of investigation officials. Digital forensics support to the affected departments; work with police and Interpol.

Factual Information — MH370

Malaysian investigation team · interim releases 2014–2015

Early factual compilations: aircraft history, crew, cargo, ATC transcripts, radar, SATCOM. Released before debris and before the 2018 analysis chapters. The 8 March 2015 issue (updated 15 April 2015) is held here as a downloadable original.

Gulf of Thailand / South China Sea search

Wrong-ocean SAR · 8–14 March 2014

Where the aircraft was last seen on civil radar — and where it no longer was.

Indonesia: Lhokseumawe and Sabang did not paint MH370

14–19 March 2014 statements

Indonesian Air Force/Defence: no detection of MH370 crossing Indonesian airspace. Lhokseumawe cited ~240 nm capability. Formal denial of concealment.

Inmarsat signalling-unit log for 9M-MRO

Perth Ground Earth Station · 7–8 March 2014

The table of channel, BTO, BFO and message type that underpins every arc on every search map. Released by Malaysia with Inmarsat notes.

Inmarsat signalling-unit logs for 9M-MRO

Perth Ground Earth Station · 7–8 March 2014

The raw-ish tables of channel, BTO, BFO and message type that underpin every arc on every search map. Released by Malaysia with Inmarsat explanatory notes.

Kadena P-3C tasked to the MH370 search

Announced 8 March 2014 · on station 9 March

Confirmed search tasking. Seventh Fleet said a P-3C would leave Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, shortly on 8 March. Naval Today: the P-3 arrived on station the afternoon of 9 March. VP-16 P-8A Poseidon had been in theatre from December 2013 — basing, not a 7–9 March sortie card.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport

Departure · 16:42 UTC 7 March 2014

Runway 32R. Origin of MH370.

Raytheon MTS award for HC/MC-130J — one day before MH370

$10.072556m · 10 systems · 7 March 2014

Chronology fact only. No evidence these turrets or aircraft observed MH370. HD-capable MTS-B was entering USAF inventory through 2013–14.

RMAF notifies KL ARCC of the western military track

22:30 MYT 8 March 2014 · ~12 hours after the minister

SAR chronology: civilian rescue centre informed of the possible turn-back / western last-known at 22:30 Malaysian time. Ministerial awareness ~10:30. The gap is a documented information-latency issue, not by itself a finding of a cover-up.

Southern Indian Ocean

Search theatre after 15 March 2014

The ocean in which official and private underwater campaigns have been conducted.

Thailand discloses Surat Thani military-radar paint

18–19 March 2014 · ~9–10 days after disappearance

Thai Air Force: unknown/non-normal target ~01:28 MYT 8 March, minutes after secondary-radar loss, moving southwest then toward Butterworth / Strait of Malacca. Not initially shared.

Twenty Freescale employees on MH370

Company-confirmed 8 March 2014

Confirmed passenger fact. Project assignments, especially defence/avionics/inertial work, are unresolved. FXAS21000 gyro sampling in July 2013 is an adjacent product date only.

Aurora Flight Sciences

HALE/MALE autonomy house · Orion prime

Founded 1989. Chiron optionally piloted aircraft 1996. Global Hawk structures since 1995. Centaur optionally piloted DA42 from 2010. AACUS autonomous helicopter demo February 2014. ALIAS is later drop-in copilot work.

Aurora Orion contract FA8620-12-C-3027

~$86.56m aggregated · completion extending to 2019

Public award aggregation for the BIG SAFARI / Orion definitive contract. Transaction-level FPDS history — especially modifications August 2013–March 2014 — is still open. Budget authority, ceilings and obligations are not the same as cash spent.

Aurora Orion RPA

Twin-diesel MALE UAS · China Lake first flight 24 Aug 2013

Selected air vehicle for MAGIC: a multi-day, medium-altitude remotely piloted ISR platform designed to carry multiple sensors. First flight (24 Aug 2013) had no mission system; the December 2014 endurance record carried ballast. Those two flights do not decide what was fitted on sorties 2–17, including March 2014.

Cubic US6641087B1 — anti-hijack remote pilot

Commercial retrofit · satellite relay · cockpit exclusion

Confirmed patent. Activation onboard or by remote override; deactivate normal pilot control; uplink airspeed/altitude/fuel; optional disable of ordinary communications; CVR/FDR upload. USPTO: 4-year fee 4 May 2007, 8-year fee 4 May 2011, expired 4 Nov 2015 for later non-payment. In force on 8 March 2014. No installation evidence in this archive.

Diego Garcia

British Indian Ocean Territory · collection-geography question

US/UK atoll. CTBTO HA08 North hydrophones went dark in March 2014 after a deep-ocean cable break. UCT-2 was on the island that month on near-shore HDAS cables. Neither fact is a finding that MH370 was collected or hidden here.

Freescale gyros and the laser / directed-energy race

January 2025 briefing video: twenty Freescale employees on MH370; gyroscopic sensors; a US-led race with China and Russia on precision laser directed energy; later public silence on Freescale’s role; a prime contractor with Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street as large holders, and a reported 38% profit rise in 2014 after missile-defence grants.

Gorgon Stare

BIG SAFARI wide-area surveillance · podded, not MQ-9-only

Developed through BIG SAFARI. Increment 2 is ARGUS-derived EO plus Exelis IR. Congress treated the podded/open architecture as integrable on more than one aircraft type. MQ-9 is the documented host; an Orion fit by 8 March 2014 is open. 2013 OSD figure: 2 fps, not 6.