Radar Return News Today

This is instigated. this was not serendipitous on the part of the pilot. hes trying to figure out what the collection capabilities are. in terms of intelligence, what type of radar return, how is this being painted. the russians are trying to decide on the tactical point what are the rules of engagement. the answer is, no, however, putin is pushing both at the tactical level to gather intelligence and strategic level to see what the gumption is. >> talk about gumption. its one thing to push arou...

The altitude was such and such, lets look here. >> they are using that very small two pieces of information, rety refining, recalibrating, but that is it. but if there is other data, they aint told us. >> miles obrien, what do you make of this shift? >> we know from these hand shakes, we can speculate pretty well as to when the flight ended. it was either the last full hand shake or this half hand shake. that means the plane was in the air for about seven hours. but thats all we know. imagine if...

China sea, because we know at some point it turned back, thats some of the information we have toward malaysia. during that turn, theres this report that it would have been flying as low as 12,000 feet. how significant would that be? well, that adds two pieces to the puzzle. if it dipped down to 12,000 feet, it may indicate there was a conscious effort of somebody to get down below and get as poor a radar signal as they possibly could, radar return, because the lower you are and far away from ...

Direction of an area which was not yet covered and then over on the other side, a few miles away they saw a very faint radar return and so it was a decision point that they decided to check out what the radar return was. at that point they decreased their altitude to a 1,000 foot or so range. that way they can get a visual identification with their optical camera or people looking and then they come back up. so each flight is different and we have seen hundreds of different objects in the water,...

Direction this time? talk to me more about the methodology. >> it does start out as more of a general grid system. were actually, there were 25 countries crick. it started nine, ten and then moved out. even with a grid system, there is quite a bit of flexibility. so for example the p-8 yesterday, they had another couple hours of search time and they had to make a decision. do they search an area that has not yet been covered or do they go search an area where they saw a little bit of return comi...

Crates, trash, but nothing from an aircraft. >> can you talk to me a little bit more about the methodology? is it a grid system or are you taking particular areas, we are going to go out this far in this direction this day or this direction this time? talk to me a little bit more about the methodology? >> it does start out as a sort of general grid system. we are actually now up to 25 countries who are contributing. it started out nine and ten and then moved up. even though you have a grid syste...

Back with our panel, barbara starr i want to start with you. you are getting information about the human hand perhaps being involved in this disappearance, which seems to corroborate with what the "wall street journal" is now reporting. >> reporter: right, anderson. ive spoken just very recently ) pá is going on is in the last 48 hours since theyve gotten t all this technical data analyzed, the radar return, the blips off the aim, the satellite data. the u.s. intelligence community, u.s. nation...

Turned off, there are two on board as has been discussed as length, with different aircraft types, they operate independently. you only operate one at a time and the other one would have to be switched on. so as a pilot you would not know if your transponder fail until your air traffic controller reported that to you and then you would swap to the other transponder. over vast oceans like in the south pacific, there is plenty of space where there is no radar return for air craft so the loss of th...

Presumably? >> i would think so, jake. they are going to be searching for every little radar that they can find because they need a heading on that plane and an altitude. so you draw that arc and you look at countries like pakistan and you get into your superman novels and see the plane landing somewhere and repurposing it for some deed down the road. thats not beyond the realm of realism. i mean, that could happen. why else would you do that? why would you take a plane off your normal route, sh...

In a haystack. thats why it might have been delayed. im just guessing of course. but its the first clue weve had so it gives us a place to focus. >> you agree also if the malaysian air force, which is a pretty good air force, the radar detection when it said it made a u-turn, that could be a simple mistake, inaccurate. >> it could be. you have to have positive identification of what that track is, who that is. if they just saw a radar return in the general vicinity make a left-hand turn, they do...