It could be, it seems to me, that the WSJ reporter still does not have it right.
As noted above and before, it seems that this T7 did not have SATCOM so how could it be transmitting pings to satellites?
What if what was actually pinging was the ACARS/RR monitoring radios but these transmissions were picked up by NSA satellites?
That seems more likely and could explain the confusion of the reporter and his source(s).
Last edited by jehrler; 13th Mar 2014 at 20:14.
Reason: typos/clarity