we have a particularly close relationship with australia in terms of our willingness to share and be very transparent with them in terms of our satellite coverage. we would have shared with them our analysis. they would have asked us our opinion and it s likely the prime minister, in making the judgment he did about the likelihood that this was going to lead to a positive result in terms of the search would have coordinated his statement with the united states. and so interestingly enough, just last night i was with a senior administration official who works in the classified area and was familiar with the satellite information. i mean, everyone is sounding equally optimistic with the australian pm. they feel like this is a very, very positive lead and development. jim sciutto, the australian and chinese have a very close intelligence operation relationship?
disturbance moving through that area. and the indian ocean is one of the most remote areas of the world. there s very poor satellite coverage. the last known position it wasa1 thousand miles from perth. so based on the currents in the area, the debris from the plane would probably have gone in the water 300 to 400 kilometers from where that debris is believed to be found. temperatures out here in the search area, it s very close to the southern ocean, and it surrounds antarctica. so temperatures would drop very quickly. temperatures would be dropping off quickly at about 40 degrees
is is basically a camera, if you will, that tells the air traffic controllers where the airplane is. again, you have the acars that was shut down. it is another form or another camera that basically provides information to folks on the ground about the status of the airplane. but it also gives position of the aircraft. it is obvious that somebody didn t want to be followed. didn t want to be observed. and the path they took, that route, that southerly route, they went down a path of least resistance. there is no radar in that area. and there is no satellite coverage in that area. so if you want to disappear, that was the perfect place to just disappear. and the length that they flew, 3,200, 3,300 miles going out into the heart of the indian ocean, they took that airplane into a place, whether they were consciously take k it there, left it on autopilot, pointed it in that direction, we don t know that part. but they took it to a place in the world where it is very difficult and most lik
u.s. you have u.s. most advanced surveillance airplane up in the air, you have some of china s most advanced warships, amphibious landing ships, rescue ships, armed destroyers all mixing in this area with the same job and the same goal but some tension in the background as well. as barbara just reported the search clearly focused on the southern arc in the indian ocean. does that effectively mean they ve given up on the northern arc? well, what the malaysians said today is they made clear that the northern arc is still active. in fact they said that these countries here, laos, vietnam, thailand, kazakhstan all the way up here, china which has a massive radar display as well as satellite coverage here, that they are all allocating resources to look and still continue to make sure that nothing is up here. but when you look at the overall allocation, you really get a sense of how this is increasingly become the focus. because of the 29 aircraft now involved in the search from a number
especially in the water where we all thought if something catastrophic happened with the airplane we would have found evidence almost immediately or within a few days. but then the faa and boeing folks decided that they were going to look and see if they couldn t figure out the furthest this airplane would go before fuel exhaustion and if there was an attack to drive or land the airplane in the water how far would the airplane get and why that search zone moved down to australia. when i was talking about it ten days ago, i was looking at people that were not wanting to be identified, not wanting to be tracked and the best place to go is that southerly route where there is no radar coverage and no satellite coverage and you can disappear basically into the middle of nowhere in that ocean. given that actually, you had said that quite sometime ago. are you hopeful from what we have heard? we hear from kerry sanders in washington talking to u.s.