Page 6 - Side Scan News Today

And more detail. theyll mow the grass, as we say. keep going back and forth, building up a map. heres data that we already collected earlier today. as were going along, recording more data. its a higher level of detail than what we were looking at. they have a myriad of tools as they get more and more detail on the wreck site. >> reporter: if you figured out where that debris field was, if youre looking for that and you found that, you would do this to map out where the bigger pieces are, how to...

Vehicle. why not? >> thats correct. the sensors, theres two different sensor packages. theres a sonar sensor package that has side scan and some other sonars and the camera is in a separate payload. that is done because when you are doing a camera survey you are flying closer to the bottom, approximately five meters off the bochlt at that height the sonar return and imaging is not as good. no sense in having the sonars on the platform at that time because the two sensors operate from different a...

It was considered a hail mary pass, a last ditch effort and low and behold it did find something over the weekend. now comes the hard part. they have got to go back over the area where they detected this. they have got to reacquire the signal. its going to take parallel runs and perpendicular runs so they can home in on it, triangulate it. and the animation that youre looking at now, thats another device that theyre going to deploy. that is blue fin 21 which is going to go down and take pictures...

Of ocean one at a time and work their way through it. but its going to be very slow and methodical work. >> and presumably, arnold, if its getting closer and closer to the relatively tiny black boxes, the wreckage presumably is not all that far away, right? >> exactly. the black boxes are in the tail of the aircraft and should be right near to the wreckage. >> and so there is equipment that would see that wreckage at some point if they were investigating a relatively small area? >> yes. side sca...

Operations and submersibles specialist. colonel michael kay, former uk military pilot and cnn aviation analyst. tim, youve joined the panel since the last hour. and youve brought with you a very significant prop. better known as an auv. explain how this is significant in whats happening on the other side of the world. >> actually, this is more than a prop. it is an actual auv. it just is a shallow water version. when we talk shallow water were talking 200 meters, 650 feet. so it will actually go...

Much of it at the ocean floor two years later, and similar issue there where the ocean floor was not mapped, and did that play any role in it? >> well, im sorry to say that it is beyond my expertise, but you know, it is that was my understanding that it is true. that is pretty vast in that particular area where air france 447 went down, yeah. >> but as, so they do the sort of side scan, sonar, what are they really getting back? what kind of information do they get back, miles, and do you think t...

>> yeah, i heard the feedback. the problem i have with this is we criticize the malaysian government from losing control of the message in their command post running this investigation. now its been -- the search part has been in the hands of the australians and theyve lost control of it. the fact that were getting reporting by way of xinhua, a chinese-owned newspaper, government-owned newspaper, i should add, cctv china, which is also government-owned the network, based on reports from aircraft...

The two men had visited, pilot and copilot visited and also found nothing in any of that data that raises suspicion. david gallo, how significant is this submarine? again, unless you know -- unless you have a debris field, a sense of where the plane went in the water, is the sub any good? >> in the air france 447 the french had a military submarine on scene as well. the principal task of that sub was to listen for the pingers and black boxes, which it didnt here. i assume thats part of the role ...

Had a military submarine on scene. i assume thats part of the role here, because military subs dont go near as deep as the sea floor is here. its too deep. they dont normally carry the sides of side scan that can scour the bottom. maybe it has it but it would be classified. but it remains to be seen what the mission of the sub is. >> they would not be involved -- one of the things that kim was saying about the sub, they sometimes look for ships on the surface during their regular duties but they...

Malaysian source that they checked the websites, they scoured the websites the two men had visited and also found nothing in any of that data that would raise suspicion. david gallo, how significant is this submarine? unless you have a debris field, is a sub any good? >> in the france 447, the french had a military submarine on scene. i assume thats part of the role here, because military subs dont go near as deep as the sea floor is here. its too deep. they dont normally carry the sides of side...