former secretary of defense, mark esper, and to be clear, mark, you know, we don t yet know for sure what happened here. that said, the ukranians are saying that this was russia. we have reporting that defense second lloyd austin, your successor, is pected to speak with his polish counterpart shortly. in your view what would that conversation sound like? what might the pentagon be doing right now? thanks, jake. first things first, if i was having that conversation with my counterpart would be to understand what they know and what don t they know. what have they determined, for instance, from the forensics on the guard with regard to the componentry. is it russia or is it not russia? are there targets nearby that would signal it was an an intentional attack, and then we would compare notes, for example, based on what we understand from our radar tracks, trying to get to the bottom of it and trying to understand from the polish perspective what are they
thank you so much for being with us. so, john, we know the crash occurred about 20 minutes after take off from jakarta, and the boeing 737 only climbed to an altitude of out 5,200 feet. from what you have been able t piece together, what do you think may have happened here? you know, it s way too soon to tell. obviously these investigations take months, if not years, depending on how investigators what information investigators have at their disposal. getting the black boxes, examining debris, looking at radar tracks. now there is this immediate scramble to lockdown any and all information about what may have actually happened to the 737. so, that s really the priority. as the skpch rescue tea searc and rescue teams get on-site, recover the remains of passengers and crew and also collect black boxes, other evidence, to really piece this together. what we have so far is an
all right. well, the russians are not happy about this, this plane going down. it was one of their migs and it was shot down by the turks and the turks are saying well, it invaded our space. the russians are saying, no it was over syria, you had to right to do this. and now we have a bit of an international incident. the russians are indicating they ll skip out on a global forum that included the turks. jenner j jennifer griffin is trying to piece this together. it s a nightmare. absolutely, neil. u.s. defense forces say that the radar tracks validate turkish claims that the se coy 24 crossed into the air space. the maps was leased. the u.s. pilots heard the multiple warnings issued by the turkish f-16 pilots to the russian pilots on the guard frequency. a mandatory radio frequency that s in all aircraft.
turks are talking to each other and find out exactly what happened and take measures to discourage any kind of escalation. russian president putin taking a very different tone. naturally our military purr seeing a heroic battle against terrorism sacrificing themselves and their lives. today s loss for us was like stab in the back delivered by the accomplices of terrorists. national security correspondent live for us at the pentagon. do we know for sure that the russian war plane violated turkish air space. u.s. defense sources tell me that the actual radar tracks validate turkish claims. u.s. pilots heard the multiple warnings to the russian pilots on the guard frequency. that s mandatory radio frequency that s in all aircraft.
avoid it. we re joined by the cnn aviation analyst and former managing director of federal aviation administration safety board. the search has been halted except for some of these ships that were already in the area they have stopped, they have those large bright lights. might be able to see something while they are there. but is it your concern, are you worried that we might be losing some valuable time in locating this plane and potentially those passengers on board? well, every hour does count. but it s foolishness to have any kind of air assets up after dark. i think this will give the searchers also some time as richard quest pointed out to really look at the radar tracks and to download any automatic information that the plane might have been transmitting to get a better fix on where the plane was last reported to be so that