debris has mobilized a massive operation in the sea and in the air and about 1500 miles southwest of perth, australia, it's unfolding. our senior washington correspondent joe johns is here with a closer look at the ships and the planes, the satellites involved. this is a massive undertaking. >> it's amazing, wolf. staggers assets are being used in the search for the plane. 43 ships along with 58 or more aircraft. one expert we talked to says it's likely a dozen satellites have been utilized. now as the focus has turned to the remote southern indian ocean, equipment with military intelligence technology is playing a key role. a massive sea search that requires an equally massive amount of resources on land, air and seas. it starts in space. satellite images transferred to the australian geo spatial intelligence organization. the pictures of possible plane debris captured march 16, but it took them four days to sort

through the volume of the imagery. china also helps satellite images before releasing them to the public. >> part of it is not telling the other guy what you got. the reason for that is there's some capabilities that a lot of countries want to keep hidden. one of those capabilities is how fast can you take a satellite image and actually analyze it and use it in an operational sense? many countries see that as a very closely guarded operational secret. >> the search from the air see equally complicated. three orion military intelligence planes two from the royal australia air force and one from new zealand have been dispatched with large area search sensors and radar. planes capable of low level flight that can stay aborn up to ten hours. the u.s. navy has sent a p-8 poseidon with a unique capability. >> this aircraft can in essence be the controller of a fleet of drums. it can go up above 20,000 feet or even depending on what they're doing, then it can control a fleet of drones as

they look at very specific areas of the ocean. >> reporter: it's also a war fighting plane, but in this mission it's the plane's underwater detection capabilities that are especially important including dropping sonar buoys to try to locate debris. the australian air force is providing a c-130 transport plane but leighton says it probably won't be used for searching. >> they can use it to determine the types of things they can see in the electro magnetic environment. for example if there's a black box out there. >> reporter: merchant ships have also been dispatched. the nor weej ya car carrier was the first to arrive at the place where the two objects were spotted by satellite. with all the search vessels, support is needed. australia has deployed the had, ms success. capable of getting food and fuel to other ships in the region. in the event wreckage of the

plane is found in the southern indian ocean, underwater search and recovery will be challenging, too. robotic submersibles would likely be required to attack underwater terrain that can go as many as thousands of feet deep. >> joe johns, good report. thanks very, very much. we're following the breaking news on the search for flight 370. much more coming up. a chilling new theory as well including this. could something have incapacitated the passengers and the crew members creating what some are calling a zombie plane?

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we're following the breaking news the massive international search taking place right now for possible debris from malaysia flight 370 spotted by a satellite over the indian ocean. let's dig deeper right now with former navy operation research analyst colleen keller.

she helped with the search for air france flight 447 which crashed back in 2009. also joining us cnn's richard quest. he's in new york as is colleen. joe johns just reported about this international effort to find the wreckage of the plane. so how do countries on a practical basis actually coordinate this rather complex investigation? and as we speak right now, it's daylight in perth, australia, and surveillance aircraft are getting ready to take off to fly to that area 1500 miles at sea. >> well, wolf, they should be using something equivalent to the incident command system which puts people in charge and has a whole staff underneath that person where all the data can come in and be consolidated in a single place, logistics can be applied to the problem, then new assets requested if necessary. i'm sure the australians are using this process. >> richard, how worried are authorities in australia right

now and elsewhere, u.s., australians, others are looking that horrible weather could hinder this search? >> it is a concern. moderate to poor weather. you saw earlier the rain in perth where even before it was daylight it was just driving down and kyung lah could barely report. it is a concern because not only do the planes have to take off from perth, fly four hours or three or four hours and they only have a relatively short period of time over the search area, maybe two hours at most before they have to head back again. it's very difficult in poor conditions to extend the search time. either through aerial refueling in certain cases and not least of which the sheer difficulty of spotting that which is on the water. so they'll continue doing it until they absolutely can't, but it makes the job much more challenging. >> tell us, colleen, how significant the so-called sonar

buoys are that the planes will carry, some of them at least, they'll drop these sonar buoys in the water and they'll be listening, hoping to find some sort of ping from those flight data and voice recorders. >> well, in the air france search, wolf, we didn't use buoys. we used towed pinger locators which are towed from ships. i'm not sure there's a buoy that's capable of listening to this, but that would be ideal to get a large field out there which could direction find to where the pings are coming from, if they have that capability. >> we're told they do. but go ahead, richard. >> let me just amplify a little bit on what you were just saying there. the reason they are deploying these buoys, these transmitters, is not really to hear the pings because, as your other guest says, it would just be impossible for that. the reason they're doing this is to monitor the current and the

tide and the water temperature because bearing in mind, wolf, those -- the satellite telemetry, the satellite images that we saw are three days old. they need to know roughly where would the current have carried them three days ago. they're not going back to where they were three days ago. they're now extrapolating where they will be now. and the only way they can do that, wolf, is to know exactly not just model it. you can model it to your heart's content. you have to put assets down into the water to see what the real current is, the real temperature, the real movement and then they can model that. that's what it's doing. therefore, three days ago it was here, therefore it should be there. >> colleen, you helped with the search for air france flight 447 back in 2009. knowing what you know now, these satellite images of what may be debris from this malaysian

airliner, what's your sense? are they on to something or is this another false lead? >> it's an awfully large piece for an aircraft to have hit the water and generated something that large. i'm a little skeptical. but what we need to do is identify something that's tagged to that plane and then the real search begins. if we can reverse drift these pieces back 12 days to when the impact occurred, then our work's cut out for us. we're going to have an area probably even bigger than the air france area and we're going to have to employ a lot of assets to look at the bottom at that point. >> colleen keller, richard quest, guys, thanks very much. just ahead, we'll continue the breaking news coverage on the search for flight 370 including a frightening new theory that's picking up steam among some experts and analysts. could deadly fumes or a lack of oxygen have created a so-called zombie plane?

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a chilling new theory is emerging as investigators search the southern indian ocean right now. could deadly battery fumes or an oxygen shortage have actually turned flight 370 into what some are calling a zombie plane? our national correspondent suzanne malveaux is here. >> reporter: it sounds very ominous here. but this is a theory that could explain why and how this plane

went down. it is called the zombie plane scenario. and it has happened before. october 25th, 1999. a chartered lear jet carrying payne stewart and five others plunged nose-first into a south dakota field. it had streaked across the sky for almost four hours flying on its own. the plane had lost cabin pressure and all on board were dead. jet fighters shadowing the plane could do nothing to save it as it eventually ran out of fuel. could malaysia flight 370 have also turned into a so-called zombie plane? >> they were at some point overtaken by whatever it was, smoke, fire or other -- some kind of problem, and the plane was then left to fly itself. that's what we call the zombie option. >> reporter: it happened with helios flight that flew on auto pilot before crashing outside

athens in 2005. pilots forget to turn a pressurization switch from manual to auto. at 34,000 feet all 121 on board passed out and froze in their seats. so far we know the malaysian flight was flying for at least seven hours based on pings or signals emitted from the plane. he believes whatever took out the plane's transponder and communications systems, acars, was mechanical and could have also damaged the plane's electronic nerve center which among other things monitors the cabin's climate. >> that's where you have a decompression. it happens pretty quickly. in a minute or so. in the case of smoke, it could also be quite quick. the pilots have a greater oxygen supply than the passengers do, so they could have remained active for longer. but all of this could have taken no more than, say, ten minutes a t the most. >> skeptics say the zombie scenario is highly unlikely for the malaysian flight because of the behavior of the plane and

the crew. >> you are changing altitudes because you're coming down to land safely and you're changing direction and you're changing heading. and professionally and by training, you would let somebody know, air traffic control, so an emergency signal would have been broadcast. >> it may be that they did try to send a signal and for >> maybe the signal was sent and no one was listening. this was like 1:20 in the morning over the pacific. >> reporter: in the case of payne stewart's crash, no distress call was made either. just a sounding of alarms including one for a loss of cabin pressure. >> what is behind the credibility of the zombie plane theory. this is an investigation of mechanical failure or an investigation into a criminal act. whether the crews switched off the aircraft systems or they just failed giving everyone on board little time to respond, wolf, or even survive. >> that's a theory out there.

thanks suzanne malveaux reporting. we've got some breaking news. we're getting some video right now courtesy of reuters. this is a search operation is ongoing right now over in the southern part of the indian ocean and you see the pilots and the crew members and they're out there and satellite images and maybe debris from the wreckage of the malaysian airliner. richard quest is watching all of this with us. richard, this is new video just coming into "the situation room" courtesy of reuters. you multiply this by several and you'll see this enormous search that is about to take place now that the sun has come up over the ocean over there. >> and i would just add, just look out the window as they are watching. and put yourself in their shoes, wolf. you're looking for, yes, it's five meters or 24 meters, but you're looking for a speck out of there and you're not even

sure that it is there because of the drift of the current and you're not even sure you're completely in the right place, but you are absolutely -- just look at that. imagine looking out and look at the condition of the weather. it's moderate, but it's overcast and it is difficult to see and you're trying to find anything on that water. there aren't many white caps there which suggests there isn't a huge amount of wind. but gives you an idea of the enormous nature that is undertaken. >> those aircrafts can fly relatively low, too, can't they, richard? >> they have to. that's what they are very good at. exactly. and also, of course, a bit different from you and me looking out there. these are men and women who are trained and they know how to do it and they know how to -- they're not looking at the vast expanse out to the horizon like we would. they're looking at very defined blocks of area and then, of course, here what you you've

got, the release of the transmitter buoys that will gauge the drift of the tide so that they'll be able to work out where these things may or may not have moved to. look at the height that they're at. 10,000 feet, very low. >> richard quest reporting for us, thanks. new images and new video just coming in courtesy of reuters. just ahead an in-depth look at those satellite images. what is it that is giving australian authorities some serious hope? more of cnn's breaking news coverage, the mystery of flight 370. that's coming up.

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we'll get back to the mystery of flight 370 in minute. but, first, this urgent story. president obama is sending a stern warning to the russian president vladimir putin. and the russians were quick to strike back with sanctions of their own. and now a u.s. official with access to the latest intelligence information says an estimated 20,000 russian forces have assembled in motorized units near the ukrainian border, so close that the u.s. would have no time to predict what they might do. these are serious developments. our senior white house correspondent jim acosta is joining us now with more. some dramatic developments today. jim, the president upping the ante, if you will, going after the russians. >> president obama is warning he's hitting vladimir putin where it hurts in the wallets of president's elite. new sanctions not only on top leaders in moscow but more important on the cronies as the

administration calls them. the russians hit by the latest round of sanctions including 16 senior government officials, as well as four members of what the white house dubs putin's inner circle such as banker and bank rossiya where they're invested. >> we're taking these steps as part of our response to what russia has already done in crimea. at the same time, the world is watching with grave concern as russia has positioned its military in a way that could lead to further incursions into southern and eastern ukraine. for this reason, we've been working closely with our european partners to develop more severe actions that could be taken if russia continues to escalate the situation. >> now, as you mentioned, wolf, moscow retaliated with its own sanctions against the u.s., banning a top american official from traveling to the russian federation, including many top

white house advisors at the white house as well as boehner and senator john mccain. mccain responded by joking on twitter, that's why his spring break is off in siberia. the administration is warning more could be on the way, wolf. >> jim acosta watching that story for us, thanks very much. that's it for me, thanks very much for watching. erin burnett "outfront" starts right now. next, breaking news. a search plane just taking off from the coast of australia in the hopes of finding malaysia airlines flight 370. is there a major weather delay today? plus satellite images show possible debris from the flight. why these pictures have some investigators thinking this time they actually have the plane. we'll show you sort of frame by frame. if the debris is from the missing plane, what does it tell us about all those conspiracy theories? let's go "outfront."