had the awacs not reported losing contact, we could surmise that either the awacs was tracking on skin paint or the split radar suffered a momentary failure, but this was not the case. it is also true that the awacs could have immediately reacquired the ron brown aircraft on skin paint (and it's not known for a fact that the computers did not add it as a non-transpondered target), but the awacs was there to watch bosnia, not the dubrovnik airport. the two radar tracks, propagating along two different paths, come together at only one common point where a single failure could make the aircraft vanish from both split and the awacs, and that is the radar transponder in the ron brown aircraft. a failure of the transponder is the only explanation for the ron brown plane vanishing from two different radar screens at the same time, while still 7 miles from the crash site and 1/2 mile above the adriatic sea. at the same time that the aircraft vanished from the radars at split and the awacs, the dubrovnik tower reported it lost voice radio contact with the aircraft. this is a third distinct propagation path from the awacs and split. in fact, it's direct line of sight from the dubrovnik airport to the location on the approach path where radio contact was lost. there are no intervening geological features to block the radio signal. the dubrovnik tower continued to communicate with other aircraft in the area, so the radios in the tower were not at fault. the data reported in the aviation week & space technology article shows evidence that two sperate systems on board the ron brown aircraft failed at the same time. the cockpit radios, and the radar transponder.
United States