australians for taking the lead on the international search. but more importantly for their military as well. they ll have been working around the clock nonstop for the last three weeks, reacting on all of the different types of data we ve seen coming in. i think colleen raises a really good point in terms of not knowing where we re supposed to be tasking the ships. you can t rapidly retask ships. we ve already seen the search area move once already from the sort of deep southwest 700 miles north. if you ve got ping locators out in that southern location, so suddenly expect them to head up 700 miles north rapidly, it s not going to happen. right. so during this delay, we need to have the p-8s out there, the p-3s, they need to be using the time to get out there and really coordinating the data we have to make sure we re narrowing down the search area. i think you re bringing up good point. it s a big ship to turn around. they have that saying for a reason because it takes a long t
bigger or heavier because that means it s going to cost you over the long run. so it s actually not the ideal frequency for under water. here s a little piece of irony. the p-3s and p-8s that are searching for this particular aircraft are outfitted with black boxes that float. huh. why not? why not have a you can have a redundant set of devices that stay on the surface and then you can broadcast on an emergency frequency and you could find a site much easier than trying to, you know, get sonar equipment underwater and hydrophones to listen for a ping. yeah. if we can, too, guys, take a two shot. how heavy is that, les? it s a fairly heavy unit. it s a fairly big device. and you said, miles, what were you saying about in one incident that the pingers were not oh, you know, we certainly at this point we don t have any reason to believe the pingers
further north and east. further south, it s much more with more frequent storms, higher sea heights. now we re watching as this next weather system approaches across the search area which essenti essentially has been described the size of the country of poland. so really they are kind of looking all across this very broad area, very difficult. not every square inch or square kilometer across the search area is going to see bad weather. certainly enough it will hamper flights going out from the p 3s, p 8s, hercules. they ll take measures to avoid what will be a constant parade of wet weather. isn t just wet weather.
confusing. stunning to me, anderson, i just got off of one of those p-3s. the human eye is still the best thing they have leaving aside all that data. they re still only using their human eyes in rotations 20 minutes to try and spot things on the surface of the water. an incredible challenge ahead. a lot of confusion as to why they refined this search point now so much further inland. and if that s a good thing or possibly means they ve been wasting their time. hopefully we ll get more word from australian authorities about 25 minutes from now. let s get an update on the search. joining us on the phone is u.s. commander marks. we talked about three hours ago. this is a new this is new information from that time. what can you tell us what you know about the latest news that the search area is shifting some 684 miles to the northeast?
coordinates on those various pieces of debris, hundreds of pieces of debris, so if they have coordinates of those, i would have assumed they were in the search area that everybody was looking in, and are they now this new search area, is this where they believe debris is or where the actual plane may be? i assume it s where they believe debris must be, because they wouldn t be able to find the plane under water. reporter: they most definitely think that s a credible area for where the debris field will be. i was just out on the tarmac with the captain about to fly out one of the p-3s. when you listen to them speak about this, going over those search areas sin credibly difficult in terms of debris shifting. they don t know, did it break up in the air, come apart in the water? they don t know what caused it at the end of the day or how this plane ended its flight in the water. all of these things very