Page 33 - Tpl News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> yeah, the bluefin-21 can do that. and it's right at that operating depth, they're not going to want to chance losing the vehicle. >> so are there vehicles that can go farther down? >> sure. phoenix international is very capable of figuring this out so i am sure they have other things, plan b in the back of their mind. that is the team out there operating the tpl and the bluefin-21. >> and these are private teams that are contracted? >> yeah, it is a company out of largo. >> how deep can an unmanned vehicle go? >> we have vehicles that can go to 6,000 meters, 20,000 feet. that's about 95% of...

Distance between the two? >> no, i don't have that. but it was not that great of a distance. because if we can hear it with the tpl you're only talking a couple of kilometers. so not that huge of a range. >> thank you. >> yeah, commander marks, this is david souci -- how are you? >> doing well here in the pacific. >> okay, great, what i would like to ask you when you saw the two-hour connection and you were getting the pings for two hours, and i'm hearing they were not able to be re-acquired. i am hearing you went to the south. would you not go to the north? it appears because they were so far...

Quest. let me reverse that point to you. you will keep using the tpl for as long as you can. but then how many days of no signal? no pings do you think would be appropriate before you can say all right, it is over. it is done, let's get it down there. >> yeah, that is really the question. and me here on seventh fleet, you know it is not my decision. but what is encouraging is the second set of hits on the black boxes were only really 15 or ten kilometers away from the first set. so -- that is still a big search area. so if we can narrow that down i think that is the best course of action. so y...

We're just going to throw the bluefin in the water and find this thing tomorrow. what we want to do is maximize the time that may still be left on those black box batteries. so we're going to keep searching with the towed pinger locator. right now, we've done an incredible job to decreasing the search area to a small, defined area. but for a side-scan sonar that works slowly and methodically, it's still pretty big. so we want to keep listening for the black box pings, hope to narrowly define that area just a little bit more and then we can start searching with our active side scan sonar. so th...

And the second thing is we did hear two distinct locations. and so that would be both consistent with the cockpit data recorder and then the voice recorder. so we are looking pretty good now. and it is a good find. >> do you have a sense of how much more -- how many more days, i assume it is days, how many more days you might go at trying to pick up more pings? i know it is not your call to make. there is a number of different players here in the region. but do you have a sense of how much longer you're going to go before trying to get the pings? >> that is really the next decision point. so w...