Resources

NAWS China Lake

Orion first flight · 24 August 2013

US Navy air weapons station in California. Orion and GCS shipped here July 2013.

A China IP is not a finding that Beijing ran the 9 March hack

Routing fact · operator unknown

CSM said exfiltrated mail went to an IP address in China. Headlines called it a Chinese hack. The agency did not publish a named operator. Compromised machines, third-party infrastructure and a false flag remain live. Not established, not ruled out.

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.

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.

Florence de Changy: US / AWACS intercept over the South China Sea

Netflix episode 3. Sensitive cargo, jamming in the FIR gap, an ignored land-now order, a shoot-down before Chinese airspace. Location is inconsistent with western-Indian-Ocean debris.

Interstate politics — China, Russia, Iran

Manifest geography is not a state-act finding

Destination Beijing, Chinese majority, Iranian stolen-passport travellers, one Russian national. Facts of who was on board. Not a finding of PLA, FSB, or IRGC action.

Orion first flight, China Lake

24 August 2013 · ~3.5 hours · 8,000 ft · no mission payload

Remote launch from GCS. Air vehicle and command link demonstrated. ISR stack not yet fitted.

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.

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.

Two waves of MH370-themed cyberattacks

9 March official-network intrusion · March–April public malware lures

Working chart of two separate campaigns. Attack one: 9 March spear-phish of officials at the Department of Civil Aviation, National Security Council and Malaysia Airlines — CyberSecurity Malaysia’s public account, disclosed in August. Attack two: MyCERT alerts on 24 March and 18 April about MH370-themed backdoors and a fake investigation-transcript phish aimed more widely. Destination IP in China is not the same as a finding that Beijing ran the operation.

Asset denial of the Freescale team

Quiet Exodus thesis · not adopted as a finding

Hypothesis: the United States removed twenty Freescale employees from China’s reach, using a clandestine compact-fusion platform, because they were the programme’s irreplaceable integration unit. Headcount is confirmed. The programme-link, the intercept, and the 18:22 structural kill are not.

USS Kidd (DDG 100) joins the surface search

Also diverted from South China Sea training

Confirmed later in the search: Kidd and Pinckney had both been training in the South China Sea. Kidd took the southwestern Gulf of Thailand sector; Pinckney the northeast. Pre-search tracks remain unpublished.

Wikipedia — search for MH370

South China Sea to Ocean Infinity 2027

Most expensive aviation search. Surface 4.5 million km² in 2014; ATSB 120,000 km² underwater; Ocean Infinity 112,000 km² in 2018 and a 15,000 km² 2025–27 box. No main wreckage.

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.

Project Quiet Exodus — Part 1

SecretMilitaryTechnology.com thesis · asset denial of the Freescale team

A long-form thesis that MH370 was a US operation to stop twenty Freescale employees reaching China, protecting a compact-fusion / spacetime platform. Public facts inside it (headcount, Carlyle, Lockheed CFR patents, HA08 outage, UCT-2 at Diego Garcia) are filed separately. The operation itself is not established.

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.

Florence de Changy

Journalist · The Disappearing Act

French correspondent. Netflix episode 3: US/AWACS intercept in the South China Sea over cargo. Location conflicts with African debris if those identifications stand.

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.

Official underwater search suspended

17 January 2017

Australia, Malaysia and China suspend the ATSB-led search after 120,000 km² of seabed have been covered with no wreckage.

Right flaperon — Réunion

Found 29 July 2015 · confirmed 3 September 2015 as 9M-MRO

First physical evidence. Internal part numbers traced through EADS CASA to 9M-MRO. A 777 flaperon does not drift from Kazakhstan or the South China Sea to Réunion.

The radar story and the 9 March cyberattack

Working chart · tracks, delays, and a spear-phish of the investigation

Two panels. Left: civilian secondary, Malaysian military primary, Thai paint disclosed ten days later, and the 12-hour lag before the civilian rescue centre was told. Right: one day after the loss, officials on the investigation were hit with a spear-phish that CyberSecurity Malaysia later said stole classified material toward an IP in China. Presence of a hack is confirmed as that agency’s public account. What was in the take — and whether it included radar — is still open.

Why did SAR start in the wrong ocean for days?

Military primary radar and live SATCOM existed while the public search flew the South China Sea. Minister ~10:30 MYT; KL ARCC 22:30; Thai Surat Thani 18–19 March. GADSS is the policy answer; the night-of organisational failure is still a research subject.

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.

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.

Joint Agency Coordination Centre

Australia · southern Indian Ocean search coordination

Stood up to run the multinational southern search after the SATCOM pivot.

MAGIC

Medium Altitude Global ISR and Communications

USAF endurance-ISR programme. Air vehicle: Aurora Orion. Office: 645 AESG / BIG SAFARI — the same rapid-acquisition group that ran Gorgon Stare and took Blue Devil residuals. Confirmed as a multi-day ISR platform in that family. A specific MH370 operation is not established and is not ruled out.

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.

Malaysian military primary-radar track

17:21–18:22 UTC · westbound after IGARI

Primary radar paints a left turn off the Beijing airway, a crossing of the peninsula, and a track up the Strait of Malacca until 18:22 UTC. Altitude/speed blip-to-blip in the file are noisier than 777 performance.

MH370: The Plane That Disappeared

Netflix · three episodes · March 2023

Louise Malkinson’s three-part series gives one episode to each of three tellings: the pilot, a Russian hijack (Jeff Wise), and a US intercept (Florence de Changy). Families and Malaysia Airlines crisis staff are interviewed. It is a survey of hypotheses, not a finding.

MH370: The Untold Story / The Cover-Up

Peter Stefanovic · Sky News 2020 · later Amazon two-part

Interviews with Tony Abbott, Warren Truss and Sir Angus Houston on the first hours, plus Capt. Byron Bailey’s claim that the aircraft was hidden on purpose. Radar-sharing delay is documented; “hidden” is Bailey’s inference.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wikipedia — Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

en.wikipedia.org · living page · read 18 September 2026

Crowd-maintained digest of the public case: 239 dead, 9M-MRO, 8 March 2014, KUL–PEK, cause undetermined. Useful as a citation map into ATSB, MOT, Inmarsat and Ocean Infinity. Not a primary source.