they haven't been able to establish a line of communication. unlike the other countries involved in this search that communicate with the command center here in australia. the chinese ships and planes send their information to beijing and beijing communicate wsz wh s with malaysia and australia. whether there's something happening on the diplomatic channels we don't know. but what we do know is that at least militarily they haven't been able to establish a direct connection with this ship to get more information about this. so there's, you know, cautious optimism but also a lot of skepticism as well. >> all right. will ripley, thanks so much. let's talk more about this. let's bring in richard quest, aviati aviation correspondent for cnn. richard, let's look at the map where the chinese patrol ship discovered this pulse signal and now we understand as well chinese air assets may have also spotted debris in that same general vicinity. we understand that australian authorities leading this investigation nearby have not heard or at least have not