Resources

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 303rd AESW

Named MAGIC transition organisation in OSD PB2012

OSD planned to provide MAGIC core technologies to the 303rd Aeronautical Systems Wing for further development of a deployable long-endurance UAS. Confirmed as a named office; later 645 AESG / BIG SAFARI execution is a separate fact.

645 AESG / BIG SAFARI

USAF rapid acquisition — the office that binds this family

645 AESG / BIG SAFARI ran specialised rapid-development ISR. It executed MAGIC, developed Gorgon Stare, and took Blue Devil equipment into a facility it managed at Greenville, Texas. That is the documented organisational centre of this technology family, not a coincidence of names.

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.

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.

Boeing / USAF QF-16 unmanned full-scale demonstration, 2013

Pilotless fighter-class jet · not a 777 and not 9M-MRO

Confirmed capability. A QF-16 flew unmanned, including supersonic flight and landing, as a full-scale aerial target. That kills the slogan ‘nothing that size could be flown remotely in 2014.’ It does not place a remote architecture on a commercial 777.

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.

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.

Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems

ISIS radar · MTS for USAF UAVs · large classified SAS bookings

Radar on ISIS; MTS-B is an Orion payload lead. 2013 SAS booked $210m MTS for USAF UAVs and $862m classified. Those totals do not establish an MH370/MAGIC contract.

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.

ISIS

Integrated Sensor Is Structure · DARPA/USAF airship radar

Same PE as MAGIC. Lockheed integrator, Raytheon radar, ~$400–462m. Stratospheric airship with very large low-power radar. Confirmed programme; no evidence of MH370 collection.

Raytheon MTS-B as Orion payload lead

Reported option · 2012–13 USAF UAV MTS bookings in the $200m class

MTS-B is EO/IR FMV/targeting. Aviation Week 2010 attributed a planned pair of MTS-B turrets on Orion — planned, not fitted on the maiden article. Flight 18 (Dec 2014) carried 1,000 lb ballast. Raytheon 10-K totals do not identify Orion as the customer.

Greenville, Texas

BIG SAFARI facility · Blue Devil II GFE available for other programmes

Q4 FY2012 destination of stopped Blue Devil II airship equipment, including government-furnished components. FY2014 USAF budget language: components available for other projects. Later inventory, including March 2014, is not published.

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.

OSD PB2012 — MAGIC JCTD primary record

PE 0603648D8Z · pp. 32–33 · USCENTCOM sponsor

Primary OSD budget exhibit: MAGIC is a USCENTCOM-sponsored JCTD. 120-hour sortie, nominal 1,000 lb / maximum 2,600 lb at 15,000 ft. Modular payload classes: EO/IR, SIGINT, GMTI, wide-area surveillance, communications relay, strike. Transition named to USAF 303rd AESW.

What were the two MAGIC JUON numbers and the FY2012/13 add sponsors?

USAF says two Joint Urgent Operational Needs for long dwell / persistent ISR. Exact numbers, submitting commands, and the $19m / $50m Congressional language are unresolved.

Angel Fire

Wide-area airborne surveillance · lineage into Blue Devil Block 1

USAF/SOCOM WAAS system. Congressional documentation describes Blue Devil Block 1 as integrating Angel Fire-derived wide-area imagery with signals intelligence on manned aircraft. Confirmed as the WAAS ancestor in this family, not as an MH370 collector.

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.

FY2013 NDAA Sec. 927 — integrated SIGINT / WAMI plan

Congressional Record 12 Dec 2012 · ISR Task Force plan due 1 Jan 2013

Statute required a plan for operationally integrated SIGINT able to detect, track and precisely geolocate high-band devices and immediately cue imagery. Named Army Guardrail / ARGUS A160, USAF Blue Moon QRC and DARPA WAND. Consult NSA and USSOCOM.

Gorgon Stare, Blue Devil and MAGIC/Orion are one overlapping ISR family under BIG SAFARI

Confirmed by Congressional and USAF budget records. Same office, overlapping sensors (WAMI, SIGINT, airborne processing), shared GFE path through Greenville, and a podded architecture meant to move between airframes. Not isolated programmes that happen to share a decade.

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.

A specific MH370 collection event is not yet on the record — and is not ruled out

MAGIC/Orion, Gorgon Stare and Blue Devil form a documented overlapping family under BIG SAFARI. That family is not, by itself, a platform, sensor or sortie on 8 March 2014. The same material does not rule such a deployment out.

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.

Blue Devil I / II

Operational Block 1 WAAS + SIGINT · Block 2 residuals to BIG SAFARI

Block 1 was operational: manned aircraft carrying Angel Fire-derived wide-area imagery integrated with SIGINT. Block 2, the airship, was terminated — but its equipment, including GFE, was packed and sent to a BIG SAFARI facility in Greenville, Texas, available for other programmes. The technology did not vanish with the airship.

Blue Devil II stopped; hardware to Greenville

Payload stop 4 Jan 2012 · pack-out May 2012 · storage Q4 FY2012

Airship programme killed. Equipment packed and transferred to a BIG SAFARI-managed facility in Greenville, Texas. Components were available for other projects. Residual parts were later absorbed into other Air Force programmes.

FIRST RF Phase II — dual-band UHF/X-band airborne SAR

FA8650-11-C-1016 · $749,593 · start 26 Jan 2011 · topic AF093-138

Official SBIR: lightweight dual-band UHF/X-band SAR on a modified Artemis COTS radar plus FIRST RF single-aperture antenna. SWaP ~20 lb / 150 W. Design target included Shadow 200. A concrete alternative to treating Orion as the unnamed FY2013 RF Persistent Sensing platform.

Forensic evidence board — facts, capabilities, missing dossiers

Working chart of intersections · ten target records still outstanding

Cork-board reconstruction: Malaysian military radar and MH370 data on one side; QF-16 2013, UAV/UAS patents, JORN, Kadena P-8A/P-3C, Inmarsat SATCOM and Boeing range models on the other. The bottom row is the live request list — Boeing’s 4 March statement of work, sortie logs, Global Hawk, Pinckney/Kidd tracks, JORN tasking, SBIRS, Five Eyes correspondence, 9M-MRO avionics configuration.

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.

Lockheed awarded ISIS Phase 3

27 April 2009 · just under $400m

Lockheed integrator, Raytheon radar, one-third-scale autonomous airship. Same later PE as MAGIC.

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.

Michael Selig testimony — Diego Garcia, Gorgon Stare, cold plasma

Nic Moneypenny notes a written and recorded account by Michael Selig, former fast-jet pilot who flew into Diego Garcia, describing an MH370 end-state, a leaked video, Gorgon Stare and scalar / plasma language.

Orion 123-hour engine bench test

January 2012 · Manassas, Virginia

Propulsion endurance exceeded the 120-hour flight objective on the ground rig before the airframe flew.

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.

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.

Orion’s first flight carried no mission system

Confirmed by contemporary September 2013 reporting and consistent with PB2015’s FY2014 “best of breed” sensor-selection language. December 2014 endurance attempt was flight 18 with 1,000 lb ballast — also not an ISR-payload demonstration. Those two flights do not decide what Orion was, and they do not decide March 2014.

Remote-control claims versus evidence gaps

Patent, QF-16, Teso FMS proof-of-concept · installation on 9M-MRO still open

Working chart: unmanned flight of a fighter-class jet was demonstrated in 2013; Boeing’s uninterruptible-autopilot patent exists; Hugo Teso showed an FMS proof-of-concept the same year. Boeing told Malaysian investigators there was no commercial implementation on the 2002 delivery. Radar proves a turn at IGARI, not who commanded it. Ten data requests remain.

What is the bridge from the ISR family to MH370?

Gorgon Stare, Blue Devil and MAGIC/Orion are a documented family under BIG SAFARI. The open question is one specific platform, sensor, command link, contract, deployment or test event in both that family and the MH370 window. Until that object is found, involvement is not established — and is not ruled out.

Where did Blue Devil residual components go?

Block 2 equipment, including government-furnished components, was packed and transferred to a BIG SAFARI-managed facility in Greenville, Texas, available for other projects. Residual parts were absorbed into other Air Force programmes. Later inventory — including March 2014 — is not published.

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.