Egyptair MS804 and Malaysian Airlines MH370: Is Something Dreadfully Wrong with the Arleigh Burke-class Guided Missile System?

by Scott Creighton (H/T Anon and Tim)

Yesterday I wrote about Navy.mil removing an article from their website which detailed an Africom navel exercise that was taking place when Egyptair Flight MS804 went down in the same location it disappeared. Readers have pointed out that the article is back up on the Navy website with a different posting date and article number along with a rather remarkable edit.

After having a look at the new version of the official story from the Navy and comparing what happened with Flight MS804 to Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, it occurs to me that there may actually be something very wrong with the missile guidance systems on our Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers and someone may be trying to avoid having a meddlesome researcher figure it out.

The Navy has put back the offending article on Phoenix Express 2016 and if it was painfully suspicious that they removed the article in the first place after a few of us noticed Flight MS804 flew right through their little naval war-games when it disappeared, what they’ve done now look like it came straight from the OJ defense team playbook.

The very first article I wrote about the missing Egyptair flight written on May 19, 2016 (a day before the one that got all the attention) included this:

“According to the Phoenix Express 2016 website:

“U.S. units participating include the dive and rescue salvage ship USNS Grasp (T-ARS 51), and the USS Gravely (DDG 107). Additionally, medical and maritime interdiction operations specialists will assist participating partner nation units during the exercise.” Phoenix Express 2016

The USS Gravely is a Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer with the motto “First To Conquer”. “Gravely was sent to patrol the eastern Mediterranean Sea in response to rising rumors of an imminent U.S. military intervention in the Syrian civil war”” Scott Creighton, May 19, 2016

That quote came from the Navy.mil webpage which now reads in part:

“and an Algerian officer will oversee a five-ship surface action group participating in the at-sea phase.

Medical and maritime interdiction operations (MIO) specialists will assist participating partner nation units during the exercise.

A senior leader seminar will be held one day prior to the start of the exercise, organized and facilitated by the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies.” Navy.mil Story Number: NNS160523-10 Release Date: 5/23/2016 10:28:00 AM

The original which I quoted, located via the Wayback Machine by Anon, reads as follows:

“and an Algerian officer will oversee a five-ship surface action group participating in the at-sea phase.

U.S. units participating include the dive and rescue salvage ship USNS Grasp (T-ARS 51), and the USS Gravely (DDG 107). Additionally, medical and maritime interdiction operations specialists will assist participating partner nation units during the exercise…

A senior leader seminar will be held one day prior to the start of the exercise…” Navy.mil Story Number: NNS160517-22 Release Date: 5/17/2016 3:44:00 PM

There were a few minor changes to go along with this edit but I feel it is very telling that it would appear the Navy has decided to erase the record of their Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, the USS Gravely, participating in an event in which a civilian airliner may have been downed accidentally by a surface to air missile.

From the Wiki page on this class of destroyer:

“They were designed as multi-mission destroyers^[8] to fit the anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) role with their powerful Aegis radar and surface-to-air missiles” Wiki

Also interesting is the fact that I had mentioned in that same article a quote from Stripes.com in reference to Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370:

• MH370 – unidentified radar blip seen in area of downing and tracked heading back to base – witnesses say it was “trailed by fighter jets” – witness (Mike McKay) saw MH370 “burning in the sky over South China Sea” (he is later fired from his oil rig job) – two US cruise missile destroyers were in the area of the South China Sea, conducting drills, when Flight 370 disappeared. – “The USS Kidd, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, joined the USS Pinckney in the search effort, according to the U.S. 7th Fleet. Both destroyers were conducting training in the South China Sea when they were dispatched to aid the search.” Stripes.com

Two planes drop off radar suddenly over naval drills involving the same class destroyer equipped with the same surface to air missile systems with witnesses at both events describing seeing burning planes in the sky in the area where they disappeared. In both cases it appears the planes will never be located.

Is it possible that this is a coincidence? Is that likely?

Or, is it more likely that a guided missile system currently being used by the Arleigh-Burke-class destroyers is not as accurate and combat ready as the military procurement teams would have our sailors believe?

Is that who the Navy.mil editors are covering for? Raytheon or one of the other big boys in the “military industrial complex”?

This would not be the first time that a system was declared fit for combat and shipped out to our boys overseas when it wasn’t resulting in some rather unpleasant accidents. You could fill a couple volumes with reports about those. I’m sure someone in the military already has.

Clearly, I am operating on the assumption that these two events, Malaysian Airlines Flight Mh370 and Egyptair Flight MS804 were accidents. Unlike Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 flying over Ukraine, in these two theaters of operations (Asia Pacific and Africom) the downing of civilian airliners has no strategic value, even for the black-ops boys of Special Operations. It should be noted, I believe Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was downed by the neo-Nazi fascist regime in Kiev, not Special Operations.

With the “pivot to Asia” and the current program to re-colonize the whole of Africa underway, bad press like this, the downing of a civilian airliner in either location would cripple on-going “hearts and minds” operations and embolden the movements on both continents which are dedicated to getting NATO and US military interests out of the areas.

We are often expected to imagine our military as being incapable of such accidental downings of civilian airliners. Any such notions would call into question our military’s engagement across the globe and could in fact begin a national call to step-back from the program of ever increasing military readiness and the subsequent spending that goes along with it. Especially at a time when vicious austerity measures are being slammed on the civilian population because of the dreaded debt monster.

With so much at stake overseas and here at home for the M.I.C. it’s understandable that someone somewhere may have thought it would be a good idea to remove evidence of the same class destroyer being involved in yet another military drill when yet another civilian plane was shot down.

Perhaps someone didn’t want a pattern exposed.

I can’t speak to the motives of this Navy.mil edit but I can wonder aloud now about a possibility of yet another shoddy guidance system being made ready and installed on Navy vessels before it was fit for combat. It’s happened before and I’m sure it will happen again.

If, and I emphasize the word “if”… if these events were brought about by faulty missile guidance systems on two Arleigh-Burke-class destroyers, then God help our sailors and pilots in the event that we end up going into a full-scale combat scenario with a military like that of Iran, Russia or China. How many US sailors or flyers, how many NATO planes, will these systems take out by mistake before they are fixed or replaced altogether? How many times will the sailors on board one of these vessels stake their lives on the missile system taking out a threat in the air before they are hit only to watch their weapons sail off into the sunset looking to acquire some other unintended target instead?

It is said you don’t go into a hunt or combat with an untested gun. What if it’s been tested and proven to fail but you’re stuck with it anyway because some bureaucrat struck a deal with the military industrial complex for the purchase and delivery of a flawed product?

As I have stated before, I don’t know what happened to Flight MH370 and Flight MS804 but I know what the evidence is starting to look like and after having done this work for so many years I no longer believe in coincidences and have come to understand if there’s a cover-up, there’s a fire somewhere. Something someone believes NEEDS to be covered up.

My heart goes out to the victims and their families on these two flights (might as well add those of TWA Flight 800 while I am at it). But, if I am correct and this was a horrible accident born of unscrupulous business dealings within the military purchasing machine, my heart also goes out to those sailors on board those vessels. Living with something like this, the knowledge that can never be shared of a horrible accident taking so many lives, must be an unimaginable burden.

If there is fault here I doubt it is with those sailors or their commanders on board those vessels. Like so many other aspects of all of our lives these days, the fault can and should be laid squarely on the corrupt politicians who facilitate greedy corporate interests whose sole interest is making a buck no matter what the cost. Clearly this is a story as old as war itself and my work is merely a drop in a very large sea of suffering, both civilian and military.

My thanks goes out to Tim and Anon for pointing out the changes in the Navy.mil article. Very telling indeed.