vietnam. the u.s. has spent nearly $7 million with assets including military planes and ships as well as the cost of the toed pinger locator and submarine. more than two dozen countries have been contributing but as for the country that lost the airplane, malaysia has not said how much money they ve spent so far. let s turn to an analyst and explorer with mad dog expeditions who has a crazy history and portfolio. it s amazing the things that you have been through. you can t really effectively search underwater in this large an area, can you? not really. this is a very vast area that they still actually have been able to make much smaller but we re not there yet. we really need to tighten this up and give them a pattern that they can actually, when they deploy the tp l25 that it can pick up sound in a much smaller area. and you can t do that unless you hear this pinger again. one sighting wasn t enough.
location. it also falls along that arc. the satellite data shows the plane could have could have flown on and possibly gone into the indian ocean. there are a lot of questions about the technology the chinese were using. you saw the video of that handheld hydraphone being dunked into the water. some serious questions about whether that device could detect something so deep. we re talking about ocean nearly three miles deep in this particular area. we know the hms echo has been there doing surveillance but we haven t heard of anything significant that ship has found using more advanced technology. the real focus right now is on the ocean shield and its mission to try to get a lock on those signals once again. that australian ship does have a u.s. navy toed pinger locator, as they say, and that s a much more sophisticated device. will, we ll get back ton you. our panel of experts to get their take on what s being called the most promising lead so far it mike weiss is cnn aviation ana