[yborg]

I'm pretty sure the Navy also knows what was causing the "banging" heard underwater during the search. I don't understand the point of leaking this information now, it just makes it look like the Coast Guard spent 3 days and considerable money pretending to look for a target it knew was probably destroyed.

[stochtastic]

I don't think they were pretending to look, they were just (rightly) remaining open to it being either rescue or recovery. From the article:

> “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”

So:

* They knew about it and quickly aided in the search.

* They did not broadcast the details of the collection to the public.

That seems like the right call to me.

[civilitty]

> it just makes it look like the Coast Guard spent 3 days and considerable money pretending to look for a target it knew was probably destroyed.

This counts as a maritime accident so the NTSB will likely be investigating. They'd want the Coast Guard to locate and try to recover any pieces it could for the investigation anyway.

Besides, the vast majority of that money is already spent. The variable cost is actually quite low - largely just overtime and fuel cost. Often the fuel comes out of reserves that have to be rotated out anyway.

[jochem9]

I assume these people could've been doing something more useful than recovering debris, so there's also the value of lost opportunities to be taken into account.

[kristjansson]

Eh…

The US military, Coast Guard included, is an exercise in readiness. Responding to something happening is probably as good an exercise as any.

[xienze]

The cynical part of me thinks everyone involved knew what had happened on Sunday. There was ample evidence that the submersible imploded (repeated stress on a carbon fiber frame, zero regard for safety, the fact that all communication was lost permanently). Then there was the fact that the logistics involved in a rescue were basically insurmountable. The Navy/Coast Guard saw this as a good live training exercise and the media got a great story. No one was gonna ruin things by admitting that the whole thing was hopeless and not really worth pursuing.

[lamontcg]

Even if you can guess they're gone, you're still going to try to mount a rescue in the case that you were wrong.

And nobody with any shred of PR training would make a "heard a big boom, they're probably fucked" statement with all the world's media and the families listening. Nobody wants to tell the families that its over until they've got hard proof.

[gexla]

Add to that the fact that it didn't surface by releasing the ballasts. It lost communications before it reached the wreckage. The pilot needed that communication to find the wreckage.

Maybe they would have continued to make the attempt. But unless it got snagged, the ballasts were designed to break off after 24 hours and rise to the surface.

[listenallyall]

> hopeless and not really worth pursuing

Even a hopeless situation, people still want to see, and possibly recover, the surviving wreckage. The whole point of the original exploration was to view the Titanic wreckage. Various military spent enormous resources looking for MH370 for months/years.

[fransje26]

> the media got a great story.

Don't quite know what was so great about this story. It was a textbook example of the catastrophic consequences of hubris meeting ignorance, and that was about it. The rest was just milking the drama as timed passed by with decreasing theoretical oxygen reserves.

[TheHumanist]

I think they mean from the perspective of the heartless suits at news companies and/or their parent conglomerates, this was a 'great' story. Lots of eyes. People checking back in for updates. ie. Lots of clicks and clickthroughs

[poorlyknit]

> what was so great about this story [?]

> catastrophic consequences of hubris meeting ignorance

Icarus calling. People have been telling this story for thousands of years.

[appleflaxen]

If you are the media, a good story is one that drives clicks.

It seems like this story did that.

[HWR_14]

I imagine one reason is to check their assumptions. If the Coast Guard had found something, the Navy would have learned their analysis was off. Also, the Navy saying "we have secret evidence they are dead, so we are calling off the search" is terrible PR.

[kneebonian]

For starters the USCG != USN. They are 2 completely seperate branches of the military, even if the Navy likes to pretend the USCG doesn't exist and the USCG likes to pretend it's just as important as the Navy.

With that being the case it could be operational inertia. Sonar tech hears something weird, reports it to his boss. His boss puts in a morning update the next day, he sees about the sub on the news, but he can't just go sending this info off, he runs it up the chain, eventually a person with authority hands it off to the USCG who then passes it back down, and eventually someone in media gets ahold of it, or someone in an official capacity makes an announcement.

[bnt]

Would be easier if they had shared Slack channels

[tzs]

What is communication like between different branches of the US military nowadays?

I remember reading a series of newspapers articles about the Somalia battle that was later the subject of the "Black Hawk Down" movie. I haven't seen the movie so don't know if it covered the communication issue I'm about to mention.

The army had a convoy on the ground trying to reach the crashed Black Hawk helicopter. The navy had a surveillance plane watching. The plane would see that the convoy was heading toward and ambush but they could not talk directly to the convoy (I don't remember if it was because they didn't have radios with the frequency the convoy was on or if there was a rule against it) so had to relay the warning and recommended alternate routes back to their own base.

There that would go up through the chain of command until reaching someone who was able to talk to a counterpart in the army, then down the chain of command in the army and finally to the convoy. By then the alternate routes the plane had found were no longer applicable, and the convoy might have even already reached the ambush.

When they got past that it would just happen again farther along with another ambush.

[sogen]

Saw the movie, but don’t remember that being part of the plot.

[andrewstuart2]

Best I can do is a flat file message transfer that runs weekly (with 18% success rate) between branch mainframes.

[anyoneamous]

So, Teams?

[zo1]

As opposed to JSON push-notification payloads over webhooks run by a SASS GovCallbacks.io and costing 15$ a month for?

[RoyGBivCap]

Implemented by IBM using Oracle, for some reason.

[bell-cot]

Or maybe a Discord server, where they could share all their Top Secret...

OOPS! nevermind.

[garbagecoder]

>“While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”

[tedunangst]

Well, they can't prove what they heard wasn't a different sub imploding.

[ikekkdcjkfke]

Perhaps they can triangulate

[rootw0rm]

afaik they did, and helped narrow the search area

[nazka]

> to look for a target it knew was probably destroyed

If I am ever in a situation like this or under a fallen building or whatever I hope the rescue team will continue until death is 100% sure like starving or what and not because of some events happened.

[Ratiofarmings]

If it's only "probably destroyed" then it's perfectly reasonable to hold off on an announcement and to keep looking for a few days. You wouldn't want to tell the families that their relatives are dead and then go home without making sure you did what you could.

[happytoexplain]

You don't think they should have looked for it regardless...?

[EA-3167]

If they heard an implosion at the time the sub lost contact? No. There would be a search and recovery operation, not search and rescue.

I'd liken it to a space shuttle blowing up, the incident isn't compatible with life.

[aflag]

Hearing the implosion is very different from seeing it. I don’t think it’s as certain.

[kbos87]

They probably heard something and now know it was an implosion.

[QuarterReptile]

This assumes that the watchstanders who heard the banging were experienced enough to have a sense that it was implosion. Just as likely, some junior guy maybe heard it and waited to see if anyone else would say something because "they probably heard it too and they all know better than me."

[Accujack]

>I'm pretty sure the Navy also knows what was causing the "banging" heard underwater during the search.

Obviously, an Orca rave.

[phpisthebest]

It is almost like they needed the news to be distracted for some reason....

hmmm

[kccoder]

Sometimes, on a planet with 8 billion people, more than one newsworthy event happen concurrently without coordination or conspiracy.

[phpisthebest]

While true, it is also true the person that controls if information can be released or not from military channels, aka the commander in chief, is also the one that has several high profile news stories cooking

[janalsncm]

The US military isn’t the only military. US news isn’t the only news.

[EdwardDiego]

Because no-one ever leaks info in large bureaucracies?

[phpisthebest]

Well there was reports that this information was leaked and the news media had this information days before it was officially reported but the news media chose not to report on that leaked information which is also curious

[EdwardDiego]

Ever heard the phrase "when you hear hooves, think horses, not zebra"?

The media probably chose not to report it for the same reason the Coastguard didn't say "They're dead, let's go home" until they found confirmation.

[predictabl3]

Hunter Bidens pp blew up the sub and the plans were on his laptop. Checkmate atheists.

[EdwardDiego]

If you genuinely believe that, then I've got a Jewish space laser to sell you.

[wholinator2]

What's the other story?

[herewulf]

See? The distraction is working!

[soultrees]

My first thought was it was the perfect cover to increase increase patrols on looking for Russian subs. There’s almost certainly 1 or more out there, and with this disaster, it gave them the cover they needed to prevent the media from breaking out into a ‘USA looking for Russian subs, this is war” and being the population into more hysteria.

My other thought was that if they showed up alive then it almost definitely was was a cover but I suppose I was on wrong on that front. Still think the story gave them the opportunity to drop a lot more sonar buoys and increase patrols and ‘look’ for something.

[EA-3167]

Remember we now KNOW for sure that the sub imploded, given the debris field, which means a sound loud enough to be picked up was generated. The Navy staying schtum on this does no one any good. It's also possible that someone in the political leadership overrode the preferences of people concerned about intelligence, but in this case I suspect that it's just pointless to deny it, so why not leak it now when it's going to be swamped by the news cycle.

[neodymiumphish]

They informed the incident commander. The people who needed to know did, and the public remained in the dark. While it may dishearten some, it was probably the right call.

[EA-3167]

Plus in the dark or not, I think most people understood what must have happened there, and only a very few die-hard optimists expected a different result.

[shusaku]

> It's also possible that someone in the political leadership overrode the preferences of people concerned about intelligence, but in this case I suspect that it's just pointless to deny it

Actually, they probably do like announcing to the world “we heard it”, to hype up their capabilities and spook their adversaries. That’s why you wait, you don’t want to say you heard it and be wrong.

[jhoechtl]

Is schtum jidisch? The german word is stumm.

[nielsbot]

Wiktionary says it’s an alternate spelling of “shtum”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shtum

(English, from Yiddish)

[SpecialistK]

Yes, it's been adopted in Cockney English from Yiddish influence.