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And what it was that they were practicing. so we get some idea of what they were thinking. >> as with any potentially criminal probe, an fbi forensics team in virginia will soon attempt to match any data recovered with the real lives of the pilot and co-pilot, e-mails, texts, known associates, policies, and personal histories. meantime, the search has remained fruitless, costing millions of dollars. as anguished loved ones wait, but without a working transponder or acars communication system and over a million square miles of ocean to search, there's no guarantee flight 370 will ever be found....

Sophisticated over their own airspace and none of that has turned up anything at this point. >> lester, talk about the transponders. we have the transsponder and satellite, two different systems transmitting information. how hard is that to turn off? >> we need to explain what the transponder does. the radar will reflect off of moving metal objects in the sky. the transponder gives a great amount of data to the air traffic controller. the blips have data block. as they look at the screen, they'll see malaysia 370, flight whatever it was flying at 350, 419 knots, kuala lumpur, beijing, all that...

Me a lot more now. >> reporter: what does it suggest? >> it suggests an intentionality on someone's part. >> there is no reason ever for a pilot to turn a transponder off unless the air traffic controller calls him and tells him there's some problem with his data block. >> reporter: but there was no known communication. the other possibility, a massive electrical failure. but you'd expect all systems to go at once. radar suggests the plane may have made a turn. >> that that might suggest that there was some unauthorized control of that airplane, either by a pilot or by an intruder. >> reporter...

They have radar, why is it so hard to interpret that radar? >> well, i'm glad to hear just now that the u.s. experts and ntsb has some very first-rate radar experts and faa experts as well looking at that data. without the transponder on, you're just looking at the bounce off the skin of the airplane. this is basically radar that is designed to help you see somebody who doesn't want you to see them. like an enemy. so that primary radar is just a sort of -- can be kind of a fuzzy blip. so -- and whereas with the normal transponder, you're going to have a data block as to where the airplane is, ...