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Australia ship "ocean shield" has detected four pings all within 17 miles of each other. australia's prime minister said he is, quote, very confident the pings are from the plane's black boxes. i want to bring in the panel as we talk through the developments. ken, i wonder if i can start with you. confidence is not something we've heard a lot in this search because we're dealing with so many educated guesses. do you think the prime minister's confidence is well placed? >> i think so. i think clearly from the first days, the search is narrowing. we still did not see the debris field, but now we...

"ocean shield." it increases the complexity greatly when you get more assets there. again, i'm confident that with where they're looking at now with the pingers, and the locations where they've heard the pingers, they've got the area down small, and it's tractable with the blue fin when they get it in the water. the nature of the types of operations are excruciatingly slow. it's very slow, very deliberate. and this will be a test of everyone's patience. >> okay, so on that note -- because it's a very good point, captain gurley, that you bring up -- jeff, let me ask you, how long do you think o...

>> well, we've actually created one that has a 90-day life. out of the air france disaster, there was a new tso requirement that new pingers starting next year will have to have the 90-day life. we've created that, and we have it out there. but once it becomes required, the airlines are going to have to put it on there. so there is out there a 90-day beacon. >> so chris, help us understand something. a week ago when the chinese reported hearing a ping, they said it was at 37.5 kilahertz, which is the frequency at which the pings emit the signal. but the australian defense force, the adf, says ...

Withholding some detail about this search ahead of that meeting with the chinese president later today. as for the search itself, the -- angus houston, the ma not responsible for this -- the man responsible for this joint coordination effort, issued a statement today. he's -- in fact, right now they're behind me in the building behind me coordinating all of these efforts. he said that the statement saying that the "ocean shield," the australian vessel, is continuing to comb the water with the american towed pinger locator trying to pick up signals. interestingly enough, according to marinetraf...

Navy provided underwater autonomous vehicle currently aboard the "ocean shield," is able to go on to the ocean floor and search about 11 square miles in a total day. takes about two hours to get down, 16 hours of search, and two hours to get back up. they take the data, analyze it, and send it back down. they want it be able to conduct its work before -- they want to be able to identify that something is, in fact, down there they say before equipping it with the camera to get the actual visual on any potential wreckage. >> and as you're speaking, we're seeing a file footage of the blue fin 21,...