Andrew,
Perhaps comparison with detection and tracking by OTHR is useful. It seems simple, blast MW towards the surveillance area and pick out reflections and look for Doppler shifts. To be able to track a B747 you still need humungous computing power and data on the target on multiple frequencies. There is plenty of weak signal analysis going on. Australia’s DoD tried it in the 1950s but the available computing power wasn’t adequate .
So clever though the wspr system is, it runs on a standard notebook computer or even a raspberry pi. Extracting sensible aircraft info over long multihop ionospheric paths in retard is imo pure fantasy.
Froward scatter at VHF and higher can be used to locate even stealth aircraft by triangulation but is limited to around 1,000 km and is done real time.
The idea seems to be at least in part based on that but the difference between a virtual direct signal and one that has multi hopped via the ionosphere are enormous
So why is it getting political traction here? Elections and ongoing pressure from relatives of the lost. And perhaps an acceptance that the wreckage recovered showed a different origin to the original search area.
If and it’s a big if, the search is resumed and the fuselage located it would be wonderful and if AR gets some kudos then I won’t be unhappy.
73
Ron
VK3AFW.