The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has spawned the largest-ever multinational air-sea search — involving ships, airplanes from at least 14 countries and requests for radar information from as many as 26.The nature of the search, in which such an enormous stretch of the globe is being scoured, is also equally unprecedented, officials say.On Saturday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft are looking for the plane. The countrys defense minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, said representatives from an additional eight countries along the northern and southern corridors of where the flight is thought possibly to have traveled have been contacted. Among the countries participating: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia.And The Wall Street Journal, in a story published Monday, said, Malaysia has requested radar information and search assets from the 26 countries involved.This is unprecedented, Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the U.S. Navys forward-deployed 7th Fleet, which is leading the operation to the west of Malaysia, is quoted by The Washington Post as saying.Marks, who is aboard the destroyer USS Kidd in the Indian Ocean, compared the search process to the mowing your lawn in a methodical series of swaths.The Post says:The United States also has two helicopters and two surveillance planes — the P-3C Orion and the P-8 Poseidon — helping to look for the airliner. In a typical day, surveillance planes go on nine-hour missions. The helicopters fly for about three hours, return, refuel and go out again. You can go in an up-and-down pattern. Or you can start in a point and do an expanding square. And loop around, getting bigger and bigger. The latter method, he said, is used when theres a likely search position. In this case, with so much ocean to cover and few clues, theyve been going up and down.According to a news release
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 23:23:13 +0000
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