Disappear in an era of gps . And putin pushes. This is obviously a very worrying and fragile situation. The u. S. Russian relationship sours considerably over crimea. What now . Restraining Irans Nuclear weapons. Stopping the slaughter in syria. Then the fourth anniversary of obamacare, the deadline for sign up approaches amid election season. Our Political Panel looks at the nexus between the two. This is state of the union. Good morning. Im candy controly in washington. Satellite images shows potential objects in the southern corridor of the indian ocean. No word yet on when those images were taken. Eight planes including the u. S. Navys p8 poseidon were involved in todays search. Wooden pallet and straps were spotted. Planes now returning to their base in perth, australia after finding no signs of flight 370. The search area now nearly 23,000 square miles, that poseidon crusade conditions were terrible today with low cloud ceilings and poor visibility. We want to turn now to cnns Andrew Stevens who is in perth, australia. How bad the weather and how can they actually operate if they didnt see anything . Reporter the weather is bad, and worse is expected to come, candy. The reports weve been getting back is what youre saying. Low cloud, drizzle, high winds, high seas. None of these make it any easier at all to search because you got to think about these planes. They got to get down low. A lot of is relying on visual sightings of these objects. We spoke to a lieutenant a couple of hours ago about the conditions that they are experiencing on that p8 in these deep southern latitudes. This is what he had to say. The wave action, the wind, the water is going to be rough, the ceilings are low, the weather is extreme. Yeah. Whenever you get close to the poles in the north or south you deal with some pretty extreme weather conditions. Reporter washing machine conditions is one quote weve been hearing today, candy. As i say the conditions are expected to get worse over the next couple of days. Theres a cyclone hovering in the area. But the search goes on. Full crew and complement of planes out there and back out there again tomorrow. Andrew, give us the latest on the search, what they found. Im semi intrigued by a wooden pallet and strapping belts. A lot of people say dont make too much of it. Reporter yeah. The wooden pallet could be swoeshd the lean. No one is leaking anything at the moment. These wooden pallets are used on planes. Frustratingly it was spotted yesterday by a corporate jet, observers on that jet. A sophisticated plane was sent to the scene and they were at the scene again today and havent found anything. We have three separate satellite image, australian, followed two days later by the chinese and now the french sent malaysians images by talks about potential objects in the area. Frustratingly we dont know where the french pictures were taken or where it relates to the other objects. If its close its building and building evidence and thats why the australian Prime Minister is saying there is a little bit of hope that we may be moving closer to solving this mystery. At the moment, it is still very much a mystery. Andrew strengthens from perth for us. Thanks so much. Want to go to lieutenant david levy. He joins me aboard uss blue ridge. The poseidon crew i know is back. Have you heard from them. Did they find anything today . Candy, thank you for having me. We have no reports of anything significant found from their mission. They went on their mission this morning, it was about a nine, ten hour mission total. That is the time going to and from the search area. They returned earlier this evening with reports of nothing significant at this time. Is there a lip mitt to what kind of conditions these planes will fly into . It sounds dreadful. And no way around it because the search area is where they have to go. Is it a possibility that the weather could get so severe coming up that the plane simply cant go for any of the search missions. Yeah. Thats always a possibility. Safety of the crew and near death is always a priority but also these planes are built for all weather conditions. Even when the weather is bad, you know, we dont give up the search and especially the radar search. We can switch to visual and we simply adjust and conduct a smarter search. Do you know anything giving the malaysian government hydro phones. Is that going to happen . I have no reports of any hydro phones or anything being delivered to the malaysians at this time. Okay. Lieutenant david levy, thank you for joining us. Dont have a safe journey. All right. Thank you, candy. Thanks for having me. Flight 370 mystery calls into question whether airliners should be equipped with the best technology to keep track of planes. Joining me now pennsylvania congressman, a member of the house transportation and infrastructure committee, aviation journalist and captain john kassidy Vice President of the Airline Pilots association. So im going to start with the premise that there is technology available, that would know where at least some part of this plane is right now were it on the plane. Is that correct . Theres technology but the scope of what were looking at right now, talking about oceans, most of the technology is not directed to be able to do the kind of oversight in oceans that you might do over continental areas. Of course, the third factor is even if you have technology, if you have people who are participating in it or not participating in it, you may be able to change the ability for that technology to deliver, you know, the information that it needs to deliver. So, when you look at what you think what you think planes need on board, lets forget the costs for a minute. What would pilots like to see on board that could help track things should something could amiss . What we really want to see are advance ways we can communicate and navigate and work with our air transport and Traffic Management facilities all around the world. Now, the congressman works on a project called nexgen. It will create an infrastructure that will give us an ability to accurately track the movement of airplanes all over the world. Theres also been talk, and i know you know this issue inside and out, of why arent there cameras in the cockpit . Why is a pilot able to turn off something that is sending out data . So what has been those seem fairly simple to do. Its not the high cost kind of thing. Well, there is a potential high cost of streaming live data, especially video from the cockpit. But the real issue in this case was all the systems on board the aircraft already stopped transmitting. I think what the regulators will do after this is look at this and figure out how to foolproof those systems so that transponder cant just stop working, the data messaging system cant stop working so sort of pilot proof . Right. Equipment. The. I lot has to have some authority to turn off the Electrical Systems in case they overheat. Theres a way you can put a small back up battery, embed that in some of these systems. You can install additional systems that do more to help us narrow the search area when Something Like this happens. How about a battery inside the data boxes that last more than 30 days. That doesnt seem like a high cost out there sort of thing to do. Why has that not happened . Those are things as i think we move into the future they are talking about 90day batteries that may be able to give off signals. Also the potential there would be streaming, that would be targeted to be normal until theres an anomaly at which point in time as soon as the plane goes off the charted course it gives you more information. This is the kind of thing thats capable to be done through Satellite Technology but were not there yet in the form of utilizing it in that way. So, the other thing that i learned and we relearn these things when we have these unfortunate tragedies happen and that is that the flight recording of whats going whats being said inside the cockpit actually only picks up the final two hours before landing or crash. What about constant . What would be wrong with that . Well, its a baseline standard, and having the ability to have continuously revolving loop of recordings will probably give you most of the information that you need to obtain if youre going to be doing an accident investigation. And to kind of shift towards what steven was describing before, i think you have to put things in perspective. Right now theres probably upwards of 50,000 commercial flights airborne right now. 99. 99 of those flights are being operated very professionally by those flight deck crews and i think that we what we need to do is strike a balance between need to obtain important data regarding the performance of the aircraft but also give the pilot the ability to do the job they are tasked with and you always have to have the ability to isolate sort of assistance on the airplane. I think once we get to the root of what happens with this malaysian flight well have more clarity on what that balance is. Congressman, as you look at the authority in congress and your committee and elsewhere, what could you reasonably do that you think would at least help or add to the body of information that is available should a plane crash or disappear, what can you do now and would you like to do now first thing to start looking for global standards. What were doing here in the United States isnt necessarily followed around the world. The ability to create the kind of buy in in which airlines would be required to put together the technology that would match the satellite capacity. Thats great expense and were talk about asking for this kind of responsibility to be shared across the world. We do this here in the United States and were on the cuttingedge with the growth towards nexgen. But out in the middle of oceans theres a lot of questions about expense and value for, you know, that particular kind of technology being used when as was stated 99. 99 of the time youre not getting any information. Go ahead, because you wanted to say something. There is a system called trigger transmission that only broadcasts when the aircraft is doing something its not supposed to be doing or theres some big malfunction on the aircraft. That reduces the concern about the cost of continuous live transmissions. When you add that with the satellite tracking that may come about with this nexgen, air Traffic Controller monitorization, Something Like this may never happen again. You would like to think about that. I would like to ask you about the relationship between the malaysian government and the u. S. Government. Is there enough cooperation going on . Frankly, i wish it was better. The reports that im getting are frustration. Were invited in, only a little bit. We have the fbi and state department there very small to the extent were asked. Theres concerns. You heard the chinese worried the other day about information that they are getting. They produced the satellite reports. So i think across the board people are looking for more in the way of openness from the malaysian government in terms of sharing the information they have in a timely manner. Thank you for joining us. Searching for a needle in a haystack. A former navy diver and ocean expert on the challenges of finding flight 370. Thats next. Predibut, manufacturings a prettin the United States do. Means advanced technology. We learned that Technology Allows us to be craft oriented. No ones losing their job. Theres no beer robot that has suddenly chased them out. The technology is actually creating new jobs. Siemens designed and built the right tools and resources to get the job done. But when we put something in the ground, feed it, and care for it, dont we grow something more . We grow big celebrations, and personal victories. We grow new beginnings, and better endings. Grand gestures, and perfect quiet. We grow escape, bragging rights, happier happy hours. 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[ pinking sounds ] that believe it or not is the ping from the planes black boxes, searchers once they find where the debris field sthere is one, will be listening for that noise under water. Were past the halfway mark of the 30 day battery life of those flight data battery recorders now. Joining me is retired navy captain and an ocean expert who teaches hydro Graphic Science at the university of southern mississippi. Thank you for joining us. Weve heard a lot today from our reporters on the scene and from others about the conditions in the search area, sort of the southern part of the indian ocean. Tell me about that area in terms of the currents, the winds. What are these searchers up against . Well, they are up against some very tremendous challenges. The prevailing depths of that area is about 4,000 meters, and so the pressure at those depths around 6,000 pounds per square inch and theres very few equipment that can actually operate at those depths. They have to also back track, if they find any debris they have to back track about 16 days, i guess, to where they think the plane might have entered the water if thats what happened. So, youre talking about hundreds of miles that debris might have drifted in the currents and in the weather of southern indian ocean. So those are some tremendous challenges. Then they have to really determine from, if they can get the pinger reception, to localize that area because ocean searches are tremendously slow, and the areas have to be highly localized as to where to conduct the searches. Just to give you and example or a perspective on this, probably the vehicle of choice for an ocean search at those depth wos be remus 6,000. Kit only do about four knots, about five miles an hour. Slow, slow, slow. Tremendously slow business. Yes, it is. Bobby, let me ask you. If youre searching for something in these conditions, lets say you spot something, how do they even what do they do with that information . Do you let it dont drift. Do you send a ship and it picks it up. It seems so hostile. If they do spot something and determine that it is aircraft debris you would send a ship, one of the ships that are out there to go and recover it. And if it was aircraft debris that would be fabulous and youre going to take it and youre going to immediately send that information to the investigators to determine what piece it was and that sort of thing and then youre going to take that and work backwards. Youre going to get the experts to tell you the local prevailing currents and wind thats happened, and youre going to look at the size of that aircraft debris and determine how fast it would have drifted and that sort of thing and work your way backwards. Are the currents in this particular search area which are actually quite large but generally are the currents in this area Strong Enough to move heavy parts of this plane, or is it only the, sort of the surface debris or just under the surface debris thats moving . Well, im not really sure anybody really knows all the answers to that question because so many things on the surface, depending how much they stick out of the water will move differently. Some would be like carried by the wind like a sail, for instance and others very little affected by the wind. When i looked at the model, and the navy has models for all these areas, you know, the prevailing currents are probably around one knot or less but even so after 16 days youre talking about hundreds of miles of drift there. Bobbie, given these conditions, both the natural conditions and now the weather, fall and winter are coming in this region, is there a point where you say, you know, we have to stop this for now. Or we know enough and we can leave the debris that we know is down there without recovering it. Well, you have to look at the seasonal conditions. As they enter into the winter months you might get to a point where you have to say the surface search has got to stop for the safety of the ships. Theres a point where you cannot leave those ships out there. If we are entering into a Hurricane Season or the winter storm season, you might have to pull those surface ships out of there. Thats a call that the coordinators are going to have to look at for the safety of the surface ships. The aircraft might be able to continue to do a surface search and you might have to make the call to, to delay the search until the seasonal conditions change. Thats a call that they made for the air france. That you were involved in the recovery event. I was involved in the twa recovery. But in the air france when they made that decision twice. They did know that the aircraft was on the bottom in air france. We dont know that for sure in this case. Until we see a piece of debris. Then you can still go back even though you dont have a confirmation