Page 12 - Commander Marks News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The edge. keir simmons in kuala lumpur, thaush. the u.s. navy's 7th fleet has been in the thick of things since early on. commander marks joins me from manila where he's on the "uss blue ridge." what can you tell us about search conditions? i know it's dark, so basically the search is called off for the night. >> yes, our p-8 poseidon, which is flying out of perth, australia, wrapped up its flight just a couple of hours ago. the p-8 is our fixed-wing patrol aircraft, the newest and latest technology we have. and they fly in nine-hour chunks of time, really long flights. this location, as men...

Even our maintainers on the ground, our mission is to fly these planes and to search. and the way i think of it personally is, each of those people on that aircraft, they have families associated with them and friends. and i know they want closure no matter what happens. and i know if it were me and my family i'd want the u.s. navy out here looking and that's what we're doing. >> commander marks, i'm glad you're out there. thank you. >> you're welcome. thank you. >> incredibly difficult task right now. digging deeper, i want to bring in a veteran of these kinds of things, david gallo co-lead...

Commander marks joins us now. commander marks, i know you can't comment on reports about indonesia not allowing u.s. aircraft to fly over air space today. but i want to ask you on this southern route, to you is that the most hopeful? is that the most important area to search now? >> i think you just have to look at the areas that have been least searched. so we first covered the gulf of thailand. we completely saturated that. we moved to the andeman sea. we completely saturated that. flying from kuala lumpur, we penetrated deeply into the bay of bengal. that's from our side because the indians...

And really no one can say if a piece of debris started in one area where it is ten days later. >> this may be a dumb question, but are you still hopeful? are you losing hope? with each day that passes by this gets more and more difficult. >> you know, this what is we train for. and our pilots, our air crews, even our maintainers on the ground, our mission is to fly these planes and to search. and the way i think of it personally is, each of those people on that aircraft, they have families associated with them and friends. and i know they want closure no matter what happens. and i know if it w...

Command the actual movement of the aircraft that the u.s. has. the most important one is the p-8 being operated out of perth. i'm on hold now with the lieutenant who is checking to see what the status is. my last note from commander marks would suggest that it is over the target area right now getting some imagery. the commander is not available right now. the lieutenant is checking. he is in a meeting which we can well understand why he would be in a meeting. if it is over the area, they're getting information back from that p-8 in real-time. as well as the folks on board looking at what they...