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A Chinese ship equipped with advanced sonar equipment will soon join the search for the Malaysian airliner believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean almost two years ago, an official said on Friday.
The Dong Hai Jiu 101 will leave Singapore on Sunday to join the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 over a 120,000-square- kilometer (46,000-square-mile) expanse of deep seabed by late February, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said.
The ship brings the state-of-the-art Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS), which some experts say is more accurate than standard 75 kHz side-scan sonar devises that have been used to scan most of the area searched so far.
With standard acoustic sonar, the image becomes less clear the farther a seabed object is from the equipment. But with SAS, the image remains sharp regardless of an object's distance.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 31 2016, @01:07PM
Why waste the resources? Are they expecting to find survivors?
Or is this the People's Liberation Army Navy wanting to show off the capabilities of the second largest navy in the world, having been nothing five years ago?
The timing seems suspect, with the downturned Chinese economy, and the fact that over half of the population want a "revenge war" on Japan.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Sunday January 31 2016, @01:21PM
Why waste the resources?
Presumably to try and find the cause of the crash, to try to avoid such an event happening again. Or am I overlooking a conspiracy?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 31 2016, @01:37PM
What Nuke says. Anytime there is a major loss of life, we want to know who, when, what, why, and where. Do we have a dozen more planes flying around, which might be susceptible to whatever happened to this flight? Or, was it some freak occurence what isn't likely to happen again in a thousand years? It might be alright to simply write off a missing Cessna with two or five people aboard, but this is to big just to write off. Especially with international implications. It COULD HAVE BEEN an act of terrorism, and the bad guys got away with it. That might mean that they are slowly putting things in place to down 100 more flights, all in one stroke. It's not just a matter of curiosity. If there was a problem with the atmosphere which rendered the flight crew unconscious, we need to know. If some substance was accidentally introduced to the environment, we need to know.
We can speculate forever, and never stumble over the reason for that plane flying the wrong way until it presumably ran out of fuel.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 31 2016, @04:37PM
If we actually cared about planes we would have online tracking. Looking for black boxes or even the entire aircraft post mortem in 2015 is absolutely ridiculous. What about the hundreds of satellites in the sky?
And regarding acts or terrorism against planes, how about the downed plane above russia/ukraine? It's a known act of terrorism -- and nothing happened, except russia vetoing the UN panel to investigate it. Besides that, keep your terror fantasies at bay. More people die of falling over their feet on slippery sidewalks...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 31 2016, @05:00PM
The plane that was downed in Russia resulted in some actions being taken. All the authorities involved in routing aircraft over, around, and through Europe FAILED to take into account that there was a war going on. Immediately after Kiev shot down that aircraft, virtually every authority in the world loudly proclaimed that airspace "closed".
You gotta pay attention, at least a little bit.
Also, go back and read what I actually put into type. I stressed the "COULD HAVE BEEN" quite loudly. At this point in time, no one knows if Flight 370 was the victim of a terror plot. Anything goes right now. It COULD HAVE BEEN little green men from space that caused the crash.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 31 2016, @04:39PM
It COULD HAVE BEEN an act of terrorism, and the bad guys got away with it.
I'm afraid you don't know how this terrorism works.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 31 2016, @04:59PM
And, I'm afraid that you've made an ASSumption that the bad guys aren't capable of adjusting their strategy and tactics to new situations. Do you think that they are stupid, and can't learn? Not every "terror group" is exactly equal to every other "terror group". For instance, the Kurds have been declared to be a "terror group", so that Turkey can engage in some ongoing genocide while claiming to defend themselves.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 31 2016, @05:51PM
That's an observation of how Turkey works, not the terrorists.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 31 2016, @06:16PM
"And, I'm afraid that you've made an ASSumption that the bad guys aren't capable of adjusting their strategy and tactics to new situations. Do you think that they are stupid, and can't learn?"
Never underestimate your opponents. As stated, if you believe that the terrorists can't learn, then you're going to be fighting last decade's terrorists, while today's terrorists are stomping a mudhole in your ass.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday January 31 2016, @06:25PM
A "terrorist" will typically claim credit for something. However sometimes they won't. With Pan Am 103 many people claimed responsibility, but hadn't done it. It took 15 years for Libya to claim responsibility.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khchung on Monday February 01 2016, @12:41AM
Why waste the resources?
Maybe because there were many Chinese passengers on that plane, and Malaysia had been failing to find that plane so far, leaving all their relatives in a state of pain, anguish, and irrational hope?
Yeah, I know, everything China do is "suspect" to Americans. Right. I guess spending resources to find your own countrymen and giving peace to their relatives must have been patented by Americans, it must be inconceivable that China would actually do something like that, uh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 01 2016, @02:02AM
Don't be so parochial. Not all ACs on this site are American. That comment could have been Aussie, too. (I'm a different AC).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 02 2016, @03:04AM
I like what the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia did. He thanked the Chinese for the assistance.