Potential Ping News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Angus houston said the initial assessment of the signal detected yesterday afternoon, the so-called fifth ping, is not related to an underwater beacon. fran townsend, on the one hand we have the prime minister saying he's confident this is the black box they are hearing, but then you have, you know, angus houston saying the fifth so-called ping not happening. what's going on here? how confident should we be in any of this information? >> i think the head investigator angus is the person you want to take the details from. what you are getting from the prime minister is a general statement that ...

Welcome back to "the lead." i'm jake tapper. continuing our world lead now, the many new developments now in the search for flight 370, including another potential ping coming from the ocean floor and leaving authorities to narrow the search zone even further as they try to locate the black boxes. the australian agency coordinating the search says this time it was a sonobuoy that detected a possible black box signal. the first four signals in previous days were detected by a u.s. navy towed pinger locator aboard the "ocean shield." that ship is also carrying one of the navy's underwater drones...

Eventually you would see things washing up. and i think the currents are generally moving in that area. but it's still going to take some time. so if you have a lot of time, you might start doing some beach combing. >> but we're talking about that. think about it. when you said close to australia, how many -- what is it, like 1200 miles, 1300 miles or so off the coast of australia? >> about 1100, 1200 miles at the moment. >> so that would take a while to wash up. here is something from tamara says okay, so if we found more than one potential ping, how long will it take, roll the prompter up, p...

Done now. >> certainly recovery of what happened if not immediately. that makes sense. our next question comes from tamara and she asks so we found more than one potential ping, how long should it take to get a sonar in the water? >> we don't have enough information to go ahead and put that sonar underwater. it's important to understand that that is a much more precise instrument and looking at a much closer area so we need to narrow the field down a little more. >> or else it's just a gigantic range trying to find it? right? >> exactly. you're not going to be able to cover thousands or hundre...

>> good luck to you, sir, don. >> just unbelievable. thank you commander when you look at the size of the indian ocean. they are in the south china sea right now. even the south china sea, it is overwhelming to think about the amount of area they have to search. >> it truly is, buddy. we have now -- i added this up. i can do an area search on a google map. we are looking at about 2 million square miles. if you only go 200 miles one way or the other of this last potential ping. if you weren't with us earlier, i don't have time to get to why we have this red arc here and this red arc here, trust...