Page 13 - Side Scan News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

For sub antarctic conditions. it can handle the roughest of waters, the biggest of waves. it is being fitted with a submersible robot and u.s. navy pinger locator to listen for those black boxes. >> once we get a detection from the pinger, we will put the underwater vehicle in the water to conduct a side scan to map the debris field. >> reporter: but the searchers must first locate surface debris from the plane to narrow the search area. an effort that has so far been fruitless. >> searching something the size of poland at only a walking pace. you can see we have three to four days before that...

Field and how wide could the cone go? what's the latest technology? >> several technologies. side scan sonar would be the first tool. side scan would be towed off the bottom by a ship traveling at slow speed. the sonar array would be given a beam pattern about less than a kilometer wide, towing along about four knots and they would be looking realtime at the data, looking for anomalies on the bottom. if they were to find something that struck their interest, they would do multiple passes over it to define what it is better. the next step up in sonar would be multibeam which, again, is a multip...

It is to retrieve something from the bottom of the ocean if we're dealing with depths beyond 10,000 feet. >> well, ed, the first order of business is locating the debris. assuming this floating debris is from the airplane. and some of my peers have speculated that it's not just based on the fuzzy images we have seen. they may be iso containers lost overboard from a ship. shu should it prove to be true, they have to do a backtrack and the set and drift calculations to find out where the debris originated. go back to that location, and the basic tools to locate it will be a side scan sonar towed...

our pentagon xpont barbara star has more on the air strike that killed al-awlaki. >> reporter: this is important. this man posed a direct threat to the united states had inspired him by all accounts ordered attacks against the u.s. now this apparently is the result of a two-year effort between the u.s. intelligence community and the people to go after him to find him, target him and take him out. very controversial as he is an american born citizen. killed for his activities in another country. by all accounts, it was a drone strike that killed al-awlaki. there were three other perso...