Was someone sleeping on the job?

With the capabilities and systems that Malaysia has in place, our authorities should have been able to track MH370's path after it veered off its course.

PETALING JAYA: Deputy Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Bakri deserves commendation for being honest enough to admit he was wrong when he told Parliament the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) had assumed Flight MH370 was under orders to return to KLIA and therefore did not react to the extraordinary blip on its radar.

But his candour, though admirable, cannot stop concerned Malaysians from harbouring doubts about the integrity of the country’s national defence system.

Retired First Admiral Mohd Imran Abdul Hamid told FMT it was inexcusable for RMAF chief Rodzali Daud to wait nearly two days before revealing that the blip appeared on radar about a half hour after the plane reportedly veered from its course.

“It looks like they noticed the blip only after reviewing their radar monitoring records,” he said.

Imran, now a PKR member and MP for Lumut, said it was normal practice for the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) to furnish RMAF with details of incoming commercial planes a day in advance.

“So there is no way an alien object could be flying in our air space without being noticed by civil and military radars,” he added.

A former RMAF radar expert agreed. Speaking on condition that his name be kept confidential, he said that whenever an unidentified object is detected in Malaysian air space, the first step under normal RMAF procedure would be to find out from DCA whether there had been contact between it and the object.

“In an adverse situation, the military will try to establish communication with the plane provided it can get the plane’s communication frequency,” he said. “If this fails, the next step is to scramble our fighter jets to ascertain whether it’s a friend or foe.

“In usual practice, a fighter jet will command the plane to leave Malaysian airspace rather than shoot it down. Other countries may opt for a more offensive method, which can lead to international criticism.”

In the event of a hijack, he said, the RMAF chief, the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the National Security Council would be alerted and some secret protocols would be invoked.

An interesting piece of information about Malaysia’s radar capabilities emerged recently in a CNN interview with Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Best radar system

Anwar said that during his tenure as finance minister, Malaysia procured one of the best radar systems on the market. He said it would certainly have been able to track Flight MH370 as it flew into the Indian Ocean.

According to a news report on April 13, 2000, the Italian firm Alenia-Marconi Systems was awarded a contract in 1994 to supply DCA with primary and secondary radars.

With such a capability, why were Malaysian authorities unable to track MH370′s path after the reported turnaround?

According to an analytical report appearing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, there could have been a lack of coordination between civil and military air traffic controls.

The analysis includes a long and boastful passage of how Israel would have handled a similar situation, but the writer’s speculation about what might have happened in the case of MH370 would certainly sync with a suspicion harboured by some sections of the Malaysian public that someone was sleeping on the job.

“Maybe it was the early hour, a lack of alertness and resources, or the absence of appropriate procedures, but no warning lights went off and no one in both the Malaysian military and civilian air traffic controls was aware of a plane disappearing or an unidentified aircraft flying over the country,” he said.

Malaysia Airlines MH370, carrying 230 passengers and crew, went missing on March 8 just an hour into its journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Malaysia believes MH370 was deliberately diverted by someone on board and that satellite data indicates it crashed in the remote Indian Ocean.