Freescale’s shareholders include the Carlyle Group of private equity investors whose past advisers have included ex-US president George Bush Sr and former British Prime Minister John Major. Carlyle’s previous heavyweight clients include the Saudi Binladin Group, the construction firm owned by the family of Osama bin Laden.

The fact that Freescale had so many highly qualified staff on board the Boeing 777 had already prompted wild conspiracy theories about what might have happened. The company says they were flying to China to improve its consumer products operations, but Freescale’s fresh links to electronic warfare technology is likely to trigger more speculation and deepen the mystery.

Experts have been baffled how a large passenger jet seems to have flown undetected and possibly beaten military radar systems for up to six hours. Avoiding radar via “cloaking technology” has long been one of the objectives of the defense industry and Freescale has been active developing chips for military radar.

On its website, the company says its radio frequency products meet the requirements for applications in “avionics, radar, communications, missile guidance, electronic warfare and identification friend or foe”. Last June it announced it was creating a team of specialists dedicated to producing “radio frequency power products” for the defense industry. And on March 3, it announced it was releasing 11 of these new gadgets for use in “high frequency, VHF and low-band UHF radar and radio communications”.

The company did not respond to questions from Express Online, including whether any of its missing employees had been working on the defense products. It neither provided any responses to the latest bizarre conspiracy theory being widely published on the comments sections of newspaper websites and other internet forums.

The comment reads: “It reads: “Have you pieced together the puzzle of missing flight 370 to Beijing China? If not, here are your missing pieces.

Four days after the flight MH370 disappear, semiconductor patent was approved by the U.S. patent office patent is divided in parts of 20% between five starters. One of the owners is the company itself, Freescale Semiconductor, Austin, Texas (USA), and the other four Chinese employees of the company: Peidong Wang, Zhijun Chen, Cheng and Li Ying Zhijong, all the Suzhou City. And they all passengers of Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared on March 8, according Eternity .