It is the kind of screaming headlines I have seen in the last 24 hours. The exaggerated and competitive eyeball grabbing headlines began after the Australian Transportation Safety Board (ATSB) released a couple of reports based on satellite images of 23rd March 2014 obtained from a French military satellite, and updated ocean drift studies. The Australian Institutions credited with the studies are CSIRO and Geoscience.

The key takeaway from the reports was that the new search area can now be limited to an area of 5,000 sq kms. CSIRO even made bold to specify coordinates where it believes the plane went down.

This development raises a new set of questions:

a. When did Australia receive these satellite images from the French?
At first glance it appears that these images were unavailable before the First Principles Review in December 2016. If so, it presents a very unflattering view of the French role in the search for MH370, the hurdles in collaboration amongst nations at the intersection of the civil-military spheres. Is it possible that these images have been with ATSB for some length of time and emerged during cleaning and clearing as a prelude to winding up the MH search operation or part of its residual activity that is referred to by the reports? If the latter, it does dent the image of the ATSB somewhat.

It is anybody’s guess what decisions may have been forthcoming from the Tripartite group of Australia, Malaysia and China, if indeed the recommendation from the review was a narrower search area or a specific set of coordinates akin to what we have now.

b. Were there images only from the French satellite?
And just 4 images of interest? And only about 70 potential objects in the vicinity of the purported crash zone when it is natural to expect thousands of debris pieces within a certain radius, if indeed there was a crash and the present indicated crash zone is reasonably accurate? Makes me wonder if CSIRO and Geoscience saw ‘what they wished to see’.

What of the hundreds of other images from other satellites with ATSB, shared by various Governments and private institutions / individuals, deemed to not be of value in the early days of the search in 2014? Have they been reviewed and confirmed to be irrelevant? Will they be made available to the public or independent experts to verify official conclusions? Or will they be kept away as State secrets or under some other pretext, and meet the same fate as the Freedom of Information requests for these images did in the past?

The Ocean Infinity offer has been on the table for about 4 months now. It took a Voice370 Press statement to instigate public confirmation of the proposal by Malaysia and Ocean Infinity. Isn’t it fair to expect that the affected families be briefed in detail? Isn’t it reasonable to expect that some time frame be indicated within which a decision is made?

What about proposals from other private parties to search for MH370? We learnt about their existence from the Malaysian Government only yesterday. While this comes as no surprise given its known preference for non-disclosure until silence is untenable, it nevertheless created disturbance. How much longer do we need to wait to be briefed, and for a decision?

In my understanding, the search window is restricted to the months of October–March, the summer months in those parts when the weather is favourable and the seas are relatively more friendly. So if we are not to miss this season, and give a search outfit sufficient time to get their vessels, crew, equipment, instrumentation calibration, and other paraphernalia in place to launch their search, then it could well mean that the search can resume only in 2018 round the same time. For a government that has for all practical purposes abdicated its responsibility to search for MH370 but still wishes to retain nominal leadership, an inordinate delay in decision making is heartless and unscrupulous. One has to ask: Are the governments sincere?

The repeated assertions by the governments in Australia and Malaysia that they will not act until they have ‘credible new information’ that helps ‘pinpoint the precise location of the aircraft’ is to put it mildly, outrageous. It is tragic, and laughable at the same time. It is clever and wicked. Above all it is absurd. It is not clear who bears the burden of locating such information / analysis and where is it likely to be sourced. The insertion of such a requirement in the joint declaration of the Tripartite group of Ministers in July 2016 is a masterstroke in bureaucratic stall tactics – appear committed to action, but place pre-conditions that are impossible to fulfil.

Given all that we know about the sparse and incomplete base information available over the past three years and more, the governments have set for themselves first and foremost a stiff task to hunt for information that fulfils their criteria. It will be up to the Press and the public to demand a periodic update from the Ministerial triumvirate on this. It is clear that the responsibility lies with them though it may seem like it is the obligation of unnamed ‘others’ to come up with ‘actionable’ information.

I say: Enough with summary rejections of calls to resume the search.. Enough with pretexts of inter-governmental consultations to delay decisions. Enough with each Government involved becoming an echo of another. Enough with this collusion.

Image from The Hindu.

This article originally appeared on my Facebook page.