Washington - The US Navy is deploying a special undersea device to help find the black box of the Malaysian Airlines plane that crashed more than two weeks ago in the southern Indian Ocean.
The so-called towed pinger locator can identify the characteristic "ping" emitted by the flight recorder from an ocean depth of more than 6 000m, according to the Defence Department.
Even before the location of MH370 wreckage debris was confirmed Monday, the US Pacific Command ordered the Pacific Fleet to move the device into the region as a "precautionary measure in case a debris field is located."
"Basically, this super-sensitive hydrophone gets towed behind a commercial vessel very slowly and listens for black box pings," said Navy Commander Chris Budde, US 7th Fleet operations officer.
The device triangulates from different positions to zero in on the precise location of the sound.
Budde noted that speed was of the essence in finding MH370's black box.
The so-called black box, which in reality is usually a bright orange for high visibility, is a flight data recorder built to keep up transmissions for only 30 days.
It could help explain how and why MH370 cut communications with the ground and flew so far off course from its destination in Beijing.
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