Originally Posted by
edmundronald
It *is* interesting that all these military air-surveillance radars and satellite-born radars and optical systems never have anything to say about planes that go down, at least in time to help S&R. AF-447 and MH-370 were a real disappointment in that regard.
How is that
interesting?
The military radars had info on MH370 (it was found in due course) but people didn't manage to put two and two together ... and initial SAR effort was victim of a red herring.
What mil radar need is there for where AF447 went down? (Note that the satellite ACARS info did provide some information early on). Why would a mil satellite be looking at that spot when AF447 went down?
In this current case, it looks like there was a fairly quick response from the Greek defense side
Originally Posted by a few pages back, Greek media source
(all times local, Greek local time is UTC+3):
0224: entry into Athinai FIR
0248: handoff to next Athinai sector and clearance for exit point. The pilot was cheerful and thanked ATC in Greek.
0327: ACC tries to contact the plane for handoff information to Cairo ACC. Plane non-responsive, call is repeated on emergency freq.
0329: Plane crosses the FIR exit point
032940: Plane trace lost, approx 7nm SSE of KUMBI, within Cairo FIR. Military radar raised, negative return.
0345: SAR activated, Cairo notified.
so I'd like to know: what's your beef?
There's an entire reporting and tracking structure in place for Commercial air. The
military stuff is built for a different purpose, not as a back up to the
civil system, even though sometimes it can be helpful when called up to supplement the existent
civil structure. (If that report is from solid info, it looks like the Greek military radar was helpful to me).