wolf, and they are at a low altitude, they could technically evade that radar. they would have to be very low to do that. at 12,000 feet but 12,000 feet is not that low. the radar from the ground can still detect them. exactly. exactly. so if they were further out from the water because it s not quite clear to me where they actually were when they were at that altitude. so some radars have gaps in them, some don t, depending on where they re transient through. so they could you could get there s sometimes when you re at 5, 6,000 feet and you re not picked up on radar, just because you re so far out. so you start dropping off as the earth will curve, and you have to be at a at a higher altitude to be visible to radar. but if you re flying over land, people will hear that plane flying over, and probably absolutely. yeah, all right. ken, thanks very much. ken christensen. guys, thanks for your expertise.
hartford, connecticut. and to try and find an object that is small, in some cases maybe only a couple feet long, that s a tremendous amount of area to be covered. and to try and find an object. ken, you re very familiar with the aviation point part of this story. the reports that the plane was cruising at 35,000 and then went up to 45,000, down to 23,000, eventually down to 12,000, and then may have gone back up to 35,000, if it were going to reach all the way to that southern part of the indian ocean. do you buy all of that, or do you think that that s the wrong direction for us to be working? wolf, i can i think it s an excellent point, and doesn t make sense to me, if you re up high and have a problem, rapid did he pressurization, you want to descend and land at the nearest airport. so there would be no reason for you to reascend or climb back up
aircraft performance. and passengers, relatives marched on the malaysian embassy in beijing today. they say they re angry, they re frustrated over malaysia s handling of the entire investigation. so what should we make of the new efforts to find flight 370? joining us now, two guests. ken christiansen, former retired u.s. air force pilot, former nasa liaison to the department of security. also steven wood, ceo and co founder of all source analysis. he spent many years in the cia as an image analyst. steven, i ll start with you. you ve told us you re not at all surprised the search has taken this long to find even any debris. why is that? why aren t you surprised? well, wolf, i think the real challenge is, as many of your guests have been saying, the sheer size of the area where the search has to go on. it s enormous. to put in perspective, if you look at just the imagery that s being collected by a commercial satellites, it would extend from washington, d.c., out to the west, out to
well, again, wolf, i m not a communications expert. so i can t speak as authoritatively as somebody from inmarsat. but to evidence to date, again, i believe we have now been able to narrow down the area. and start being able to have more of a bull s eye approach on what this area needs to be focused on. and using all of the sources of data, whether it s airplanes or satellite imagery, or in this case inmarsat, we need to really triangulate and concentrate the search area, even more intensely. and final question to you, ken. this whole notion that maybe, maybe the plane was after it made that left turn, left malaysian air space, was about to enter vietnamese air space but made that u-turn or left turn or whatever you want to call it, avoiding thai radar, avoiding indonesian radar, because both of those countries say they have no evidence that that plane was flying through their air space. what do you make of that? well, if they re over water,
atlantic ocean, they started finding debris within five days. and they started finding a whole lot of debris. but eventually took two years to actually find the flight data and voice recorders. and that was a relatively contained area. this seems so much more challenging, mike. what do you think? i think it s very challenging. and without a starting point, it would you would expend a lot of resources with fall very small chance of success. what do you think, ken? do you think they re looking in the right area? a lot of people are suggesting, you know what, this is a wild goose chase over there. they should be looking not northern part over land someplace, given the northern arc it could have gone. what s your sense? well, let s go with that for a minute, wolf. on that 777, you have an emergency locater transmitter. and if the aircraft, let s say,