flying higher than that for a while. but it also spent part of its time at a fairly low altitude. all right, well, thank you very much for the weather angle of this. we go back to the military angle. i ve been wanting to say all day there s no way there isn t a gps transponder on this. somebody knows exactly where it is. and jim has more information on that front? just moments ago, an official from norad in colorado was briefing pentagon reporters here, via a phone conference. at the very beginning of his brief, he stopped to say, we just got word that the aerostat is, in fact, down. it s down in montour county in pennsylvania, which is right next to columbia county where it apparently skipped across the countryside, and the tail that it was dragging, took out a lot of power lines and darkened the homes of tens of thousands of people. now, according to the officials,
jim, that s technically the eastern third, but kind of mid state, and up there near the a in pennsylvania. looking at this graphic. and this thing has covered an incredible ground today. again, there s no way this much technology doesn t have a gps transponder on it. so somebody at raytheon has its exact course mapped out. maybe someday that will be public domain and we can see the amazing adventure this thing has taken today. but if i m not mistaken, montour county is up near the i, or the a, at the end of pennsylvania. and what a trek. jim, if you re right about the disintegration of the tail section, not just the deflation, along with dragging this cable behind it, this is just worst case scenario for a defense
the debris which would then help the searchers find the black boxes. ken, as you look forward, i think it s still a question whether we actually are looking in the right area. but are we looking in the right area? and as you look at the data as it came in from satellites, do you think anything changes in terms of technology for satellites or other instruments that you ve seen used? absolutely. i think the increase in the battery life to 90 days is clearly going to help when the wreckage is in the water. we really need to ramp up technology is when the aircraft enters the water or on land. if it happens on land you have the emergency locater transmitter that will alert and satellites will pinpoint that. we don t have that sort of pinpoint accuracy when something goes into water. a stand-alone, autonomous gps transponder that says here i am,
he said they weren t collecting the data but they are collecting all of the data. i mean every phone call is being collected. there is a danger that phone calls could ultimately be used through this type of collection to track your movements basically your cellphone is nothing more than a gps transponder as well. neil: a lot of this pre-dates your arrival but the administration argued that senators who were expressed surprises, they knew this was going on. did you? i didn t express, just outrage. the last year i was in las vegas and i had classified briefings on this but i wasn t allowed to talk about it in specifics. last year in las vegas, they are looking at i can t tell you the real number because that would be in my classified briefing. i said last year they are looking at quazillion phone