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welcome back. you're watching cnn, i'm natalie allen. we'll continue our coverage of the missing malaysia airlines plane in a moment. first i want to look at thor stories we're following closely as well. the european union has announced a new round of sanctions against russia targeting political leaders close to president vapd. e.u. leaders plan to sign a political association pact with ukraine later today. turkey's government has blocked twitter after the prime minister vowed to eradicate the social networking site. prime minister erdogan vented at

a campaign rally. he says twitter ignored court orders to remove the web links. the founding pastor of a kansas church known for its anti-gay protest at public events has died. fred phelps was 84 years old. westboro baptist church members have picketed thousands of events, everything from lady gaga concerts to military funerals. now, an update of our top story again. planes are in the air over the indian ocean searching for signs of missile airlines flight 370, the area extremely remote and malaysia is asking the u.s. for more equipment to pick up the ping of the plane's data recorder once wreckage is found. the focus of the operation of debris spotted by satellite that may be from the missing plane. but australia's prime minister has said once again that there's no guarantee. well, relatives of the passengers and crew just want to know where will r their loved

ones. the distraught father of one passenger says he still believes everyone from the missing plane is alive somewhere. he spoke with our david mckenzie in beijing. >> translator: i can't sleep each night because all i think about is my son. up until now, what else can we do? this is about his flight. there is nothing you can do to help. we can only wait for further updates. >> reporter: is this the hardest thing you've ever had to go through? >> translator: this is the first time in my life to experience something like this. in the past, i just watched other people's stories on the news. i watched explosions, ships sink and plane accidents. those were other people's stories. this time it is my turn for bad luck. it is my turn to actually experience this. this is not watching news, it is living it. >> reporter: do you still believe your son is alive?

>> translator: i firmly believe that my son, together with everyone on board, will all survive. >> reporter: what message do you have for your son? >> translator: come back quickly. you have made everyone in the family very nervous. everyone in the family is waiting for you to return. he has to come back with everyone on board. he can't come back by himself. >> you have to feel for those families. how do you go about searching what has been described as one of the most inaccessible spots on earth? the public may not hear about all the technology being used. >> reporter: out of the public eye, the u.s. is using some of its most highly sensitive technologies and top secret government and industry intelligence analysts to help find flight 370. >> i wouldn't get into the specifics of each and every one of those tools because, you know, some of those cools we don't talk about. >> reporter: the u.s. believes

australia's search area off the west coast is the logical place to find the wreckage. sources first told cnn friday that based on a classified analysis, u.s. officials thought the overwhelming likelihood was the plane went down in the indian ocean. the most recent clue? these satellite image which is may or may not show the plane debris about 1,500 miles off the coast. >> it is probably the best lead we have right now but we need to get there, find them, see them, assess them to know whether it's really meaningful or not. >> reporter: australian analysts went over the images but it's who took them that is the most telling. they were taken by digital globe, a denver-based commercial satellite company that has a $3 billion contract with the u.s. intelligence community and military. the company positioned its satellites in recent days over the search area after talking to u.s. intelligence agencies and the australians according to an industry official. this as american intelligence,

military and aviation officials continued to analyze and refine bits of data to knit together the likely path of the plane. the likely scenario took them into the indian ocean. several officials tell cnn. that initial classified analysis concluded it was likely the plane crashed into this specific area of the southern indian ocean. then the analysis was updated as the days passed, the search moved south to here along australia's west coast. and hints of another big secret from malaysia. >> i can confirm that we have received some radar data but we are not at liberty to release information from other countries. >> reporter: many believe a secret u.s. and australian radar and satellite system in the outback may have picked up some signals about the flight. barbara starr, cnn, the pentagon. well, adding to the urgency

in the search for the flight, the plane's voice and data recorders. they were crucial to investigators and malaysia is appealing to the u.s. to provide more of the devices that can detect the pings from those recorders. we get more on that from renee mar marsh. >> reporter: these two hints in the indian ocean may be the best hint yet. but even if they are from the missing plane, the real key to understanding what happened could still be miles away at the bottom of the ocean and it's call, but time is running out. >> so the minute this is no longer broadcasting things become much more difficult. >> reporter: the cockpit voice recorder stores at least two hours of audio and the data recorder contains at least 36 hours of instrument data. both crucial to understanding what happened. transmitters on the recorders send out a locating tone, but that only lasts for 30 days. malaysian officials say without

the pings, they don't have the technology to find them on their own. >> looking about submarine technology and before that becomes an issue i can tell you that the malaysian submarines do not have that technology. >> reporter: the f the plane is in the water, the recorders may have sunk far from the where the debris is. the water in the indian ocean can be 13,000 feet deep, more than ten times the height of the empire state building. >> it becomes a situation of trying to hear a very tiny signal in a really complex background noise and that's a hard problem no matter what made only worse by this being very deep which makes the signal lower. >> reporter: these tones can be heard from two miles away, but only by using special underwater listening devices. planes even drop buoys like these to help listen. one bit of good news -- data on the boxes is preserved long after the pingers go silent.

it took two years before investigators found the recorders belonging to air france flight 447 on the bottom of the atlantic. a data was still there. but even if they do find them in this case, since the cockpit voice recorder is only two hours long, there's no guarantee it will answer every question as to what happened to flight 370. well, one major manufacturer of pingers tell cnn that since the crash of air france flight 447 there's been a push to require pingers be attached to the body of the plane not just the black boxing. those pingers would be required to have a range of six to 10 nautical miles. that's much further than the current two nautical miles and the minimum battery life would be extended to 90 days instead of 30. these rules would only apply to newly manufactured planes. rene marsh, cnn, washington. pro-russian forces are

tightening their grip on crimea. up next here, how ukraine is responding to the ongoing russian takeover. you're comfortable here, it's where you email, shop, even bank. but are you too comfortable? these days crime can happen in a few keystrokes. american express can help protect you with intelligent security that learns your spending patterns, and can alert you to an unusual charge instantly. so you can be a member of a more secure world. this is what membership is. this is what membership does.

updating you on the air and sea search now for malaysia airlines flight 370. the first five search planes is now returning to base after scanning remote waters of the

southern indian ocean. it's been looking for any sign of the boeing 777 missing now for nearly two weeks. australia's prime minister cautions that two objects spotted in the area by satellite may not be from the flight but he says the families of the people aboard flight 370 deserve every possible effort. turning to the crisis now in ukraine. pro-russian forces have smashed through the gate of another ukrainian military base in crimea. local residents gathered to watch the spectacle as the ukrainian flags were lowered and replaced with russian flags. meantime, ukraine's government is preparing for more military moves by moscow. cnn's ivan watson is in ukraine. >> reporter: target practice on a ukrainian firing range. the ukrainian armed forces are preparing to defend their country and they're signing up new recruits. if knees national guard reservists look ragtag, it's

because they were only recruited less than a week ago. they are all volunteer fighters who signed up from kiev's square. recruiters from ukraine's newly formed national guard have been on duty on the edge of kiev's famous my don for less than a week. signing up, they say, about 100 new recruits a day. it's part of the government's new $700 million military mobilization plan, to recruit 40,000 more men to the armed forces and national guard. and it seems to be working. throughout the day, men trick until to this national guard recruiting center. among those signing up is a 44-year-old flight engineer named alexander lukanenka. he calls himself a patriot motivated by a single goal. >> protect ukraine. >> reporter: does it feel like ukraine is in danger right now? >> yes.

i feel a very dangerous situation in ukraine just now. very dangerous. >> reporter: nearly everyone we talked to says the threat comes from russia. that's why 33-year-old alexander stefan chuk, a former systems analyst, has traded in his computer for a kalashnikov. speaking in fluent russian, he says ukraine's enemy is russia. a war could break out, he tells me, all because of a little napoleon named vladimir putin. the russian occupation and annexation of crimea has helped bring together ukrainians who just last month battled each other on opposite sides of kiev's barricades. black uniformed officers from the ministry of interior now train former anti-government militiamen how to fight. former adversaries united for the moment against their much bigger better armed russian neighbor. ivan watson, cnn at the national

guard base in ukraine. turkey's government has blocked twitter after the prime minister vowed to eradicate the social media site. tayyip erdogan spoke out against twitter at a campaign rally. he says twitter ignored court orders to remove web links from the site. >> translator: can you imagine their international conspiracies? twitter witter, we have a court order now, we wipe out all of these. the international community can say this, can say that, i don't care at all. everyone will see how powerful the republic of turkey is. >> reporter: hours later twitter users in turkey began to experience widespread disruptions. twitter is fighting back, offering a work around so users can send out tweets with their cell phones. a controversial aunt gay pastor in the u.s., famous for protesting at military funerals,

has died. fred phelps' supporters often made outrageous claims that all of the world's natural and man made disasters were god's punishment for america's acceptance of homosexuality and he believed that gays and lesbians should be put to death. he and his family often picketed military funerals with signs reading "thank god for dead soldiers" and appalled many of the people attending those funerals. phelps died of natural causes at age 84. the indian ocean is extremely deep and if the malaysian airplane is there, this torpedo-like underwater vehicle just might be called into service to help locate it. we'll have that story straight ahead. we'll show you what its developer says it can do and had done before.

returning again to our top

story, the search for the missing malaysia airliner. search efforts off the coast of australia were hampered by weather earlier, though. i think samantha is here to tell us they have improved so hopefully we'll wait and find out if they're able to see anything. >> the conditions are about as good as they're going to get, at least for the next 4 to 36 hours. we have a bit of a window and then things will start to go downhill. but during the afternoon on saturday the clouds will move in. you can see right now, though, there are some thunderstorms out there. you see that along the inner tropical convergence zone north and south of the equator. and another thing that happens south of the equator and north of the equator is you get circulations that affect the currents here, most notably you get the air rushing up from the equator down towards the south pole here and what that creates are some strong currents. and most notably closest to the search area is what is called the roaring 40s which was great

for shipping interests back in the sailing days because they would just zip along here on these very strong westerlies that get up here, some 25 to 40 kilometers per hour. north of this, though, it is much calmer, at least where we believe that possible debris to be in this search area. it is not in the realm, it's not near enough to get caught up in this incredibly fast current. but if it does drift in that direction, it would start moving much faster. but it is most likely not where it was if this is, in fact, the missing airliner it has probably moved most likely a couple of kilometers -- couple hundred kilometers since the accident to weeks ago and since the incident. so here are these strong currents that move counterclockwise all along the indian basin, that very deep end ran basin and you can see how the clouds are moving away. so we are seeing a break in the action. the winds are easing a bit. there's not a lot of landmasses out here, it's so far out in the

ocean that there are no real wind breaks as far as land is concerned, no large landmasses to break the wind here. so we'll see a bit of a break in the weather, at least through saturday night then we'll see those clouds increase saturday afternoon in advance of the front and more rain moving in along with the cloud cover that will increase here as we head through our sunday, we're also going to have to put up with those winds and choppy seas as well. so the winds will be on the increase as this front moves in as well, natalie. it's bound to make it much more difficult. >> right, absolutely. a team of oceanographers is standing by in case they're needed for the flight. they're set to deploy a special type of submarine, a kind of underwater drone to scan the ocean floor and it can go quite deep to do that. randy kay reports from woods hole, massachusetts. >> reporter: this robot submarine may hold the key to finding malaysia airlines flight 370. it's called the remus 6 f000 and was developed by the woods hole oceanographic institution on

cape cod. it's 13 feet long, weighs almost a ton, and costs about $2.5 million. mike purcell is the principal engineer here. >> they can go up and down mountains that are up to 40 degrees in slope. they are very stable so you get really good data almost all the time. >> reporter: why would this underwater robot find something even the u.s. navy and search teams for from more than two dozen different countries have been been able to find? first of all, the torpedo shaped vehicles can reach depths of more than three and a half miles below the surface. and it can survey wide swathes of the ocean floor using what's called side scan sonar. >> they send a sound pulse that's sort of a fan beam out to the side and it will travel out almost half a mile from the vehicle and it bounces off the sea floor and we get a reflection back to the vehicle. >> reporter: they call the process mowing the lawn because

it works its assigned grid back and forth before returning to the surface with images captured on a high-resolution camera. it's all done at the touch of a laptop on dry land. how do you tell the difference? how do you know if it's a fish or rock or plane? >> you can tell from the return. man made objects, metal on the sea floor responds very strongly. >> reporter: the team here hasn't been asked yet to help search for the plane in the ocean, but the they are, it won't be the first time. the remus 6000 was called on to help find air france flight 447 after it crashed into the atlantic notion june, 2009. two years later, a search team from woods hello kate it had wreckage of the jet about two and a half miles beneath the surface after months of searching something only possible because of this underwater robot. this is the initial shot of the air france debris field captured by the remus 6000. >> there were obvious signs that this was from the plane.

>> reporter: one team member first noticed a backpack on the ocean floor belonging to a passenger. closer images revealed the plane's engine, one of the wings, even the landing gear. before you put one of these vehicles in the water you have to narrow down the search area. the team from here searched 5,000 square miles for the air france flight and it still took them more than 100 attempts to find the debris, and that's just fraction of the area that they're looking at for flight 370. while the team here with their underwater robots is ready for the call if it comes, what they'd hope to discover more than anything are survivors. randi kaye, cnn, woods hole, massachusetts. well, an australian air force plane that has been scanning a remote area of the southern indian ocean for any visual sign of the flight is now returning to base. four other australian and u.s. planes are joining in today's search there. so far there's been no word on

anything found. debris spotted last sunday by satellite may be related but australia's prime minister acknowledges it may only be a lost shipping container. we wait and see. thank you for joining us in the cnn newsroom, i'm natalie allen. viewers in the u.s. will now see "early start." up next for international viewers, you'll see "world business today." good day.

breaking news overnight. searching for the wreckage of the missing malaysia airlines flight 370. planes and ships now scouring a remote southern section of the indian ocean up above at this moment. are they seeing the debris that some believe could be part of the vanished jetliner? we're bringing you live, team coverage of all of the latest developments overnight. good morning, everyone. welcome to "early start." good to see you. i'm john berman. >> i'm poppy harlow in for christine romans today. it is friday, march 21st, 4:00 a.m. on the east coast, an "early start" for us because of the breaking news. >> an especially early start. up next, the race against time to find missing flight 370. five jets, four from australia, one from the united states, scouring the surf zone in the indian ocean overnight, looking for two objects