@RetiredF4
Your post regarding the way military primary radar works makes perfect sense. I can imagine that the identity of commercial air traffic is appended to its related target/return. As you say, the military radar operative would know exactly what the target was that had now turned around and was flying back over his airspace.
I have some experience of using primary radar in a recreational marine environment and when you are monitoring radar 'in anger' such as thick fog it is quite easy to work out what is what after working the set for a while. The system we use for secondary radar is called AIS and all commercial traffic is tagged with name/course/speed etc. The Malaysian military radar operative would have known what all the targets on his set were - otherwise what is the point of monitoring it at all ?
I realise this is more or less a repeat of your post but I find it staggering that 5 days on, the Malaysian authorities are saying it needs further analysis.