I'll guarantee you one thing though - every hour spent by an RF engineer to limit that range saves somewhere on the order of half a day's worth of ocean to cover.
This is an incredibly complex system with limited knowledge of all of the variables.
To describe the difficulty, it would be like me asking you to find out which cows your hamburger came from after visiting a random McDonalds. You could probably limit it down to a few slaughter houses, but you'd never be able to pinpoint the cows.
Thanks TelcoAg - I agree with you. Too many people are criticising those involved in the investigation for taking "too long" to figure out "probable outcomes" from the sparse data involved. This is a difficult and imprecise science - it takes a lot of skill, mathematical modelling and , yes, time, to make sensible deductions from the sparse information available. I would feel sure that there a lot of dedicated engineers (both inside and outside government organisations) who are putting in a lot of hours trying to figure things out. Let them do their job without levelling accusations at them that they ar intentionally hiding things.