Updated AWACS Plane Sent Into Southern Indian Ocean. MH370 Preparing For Diego Garcia Takeoff?

Original article on BIN by Jim Stone stated AWACS hid the aircraft, in the initial hijacking. This would explain the dissapearence from civilian radar. AWACS will hide aircraft from civilian radar, but not military. With all the military attention in the S. Indian Ocean, and all eyes on BIOT (Diego Garcia) they need to pull out the big guns with the MESA system.

The official story is the Australians are sending in a high tech updated AWACS (called MESA) platform made by Northrop Grumman to direct the increased traffic.

An air force E-7A Wedgetail equipped with advanced radar “is on its first operational” task in the search area in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said in a tweet. Earlier, Mr Angus Houston, who heads the joint agency coordinating the multinational search effort, said the modified Boeing 737 will monitor the increasingly crowded skies over the remote search zone.

http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/australia-deploys-flying-air-traffic-controller

Now, the E-7A is equipped with the MESA system.

https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/australias-troubled-e-737-wedgetail-awacs-program-05173/

The MESA radar provides air-to-air coverage, air-to-surface coverage, integrated identification friend or foe, special track beams and focused sector operation.

MESA builds on the company’s expertise acquired from the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) to bring military airborne surveillance capabilities to mid-size Boeing 737 aircraft. MESA enables sophisticated air-to-air and maritime coverage and integrated identification of friend-or-foe systems.

http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/MESA/Pages/default.aspx

Timing is pretty good to ditch plane in the ocean since the plan was blown wide open by the ACARS data uploading to Inmarsat, so the plan is to electronically hide the aircraft, fly it to a location where it will be crashed, only to be found conveniently by the Ocean Shield.

Edit to add:

March 17/14: Support. A 5-year, A$ 901 million support contract extension (q.v. July 29/13) to Boeing Defence Australia will help No.2 Sqn in Williamtown with program management, supply-chain management, engineering, and maintenance services until at least 2019.

The contract’s scope covers all 6 E-7A Wedgetail aircraft, a full flight simulator, an operational mission simulator, a software development and test laboratory, and maintenance facilities.