mm43,
I have no further information to identify specific items of debris, other than that provided graphically by the BEA for the V/S, and for the Port Outer Spoiler obtained from a very reliable source. The difficulty with back-tracking the various objects is determining how they actually behaved in different sea states and wind. This is why the phase 3 search area is still relatively large, ie. 887NM2.
I was just riffing in email with SallyAnne on my idea of sending delta positions as part of every ACARS message. If I remember correctly there is a full position report every 10 minutes. Planes seldom cover more than 50 miles from their last position report until the next one. Figure that as one BYTE of information each for latitude and longitude delta. At 0.2 miles resolution that's about a four orders of magnitude reduction in position possibilities in 10 minutes. Imagine the affect this would have on the search operations. It's a change to ACARS messages that would probably pay for itself in savings from one over the ocean disaster. Even the recent event West of Lebanon would have been easier for recovery.
(You's even be able to get a useful improvement in a pair of 64 bit printable characters using "Base64" style encoding and working with deltas from last delta or last position report extrapolated with its velocity vector.)
Relative to new fancier recorders or full time data streams this would be a really cheap solution with a large potential payback.
{^_^}