Surveillance UAV used in search?
Maybe it was mentioned, but I could not find it anywhere: Was any Global Hawk type aircraft used in the search? Especially for the more westerly search areas it seems like the right craft to use. Instead of just one or two hours, these could stay in the search area for many hours, almost the entire daylight period.
Of course that would be a different way of searching, which implies flying a bit higher than normal search craft, and taking thousands of pictures downwards like a satellite. Those you can then analyze later after landing. But since the resolution and color quality would be much better than that of a satellite (you can adjust it by choosing flight altitude) much smaller items would be visible (satellites really would require an oil slick, or a floating part the size of the vertical fin a la AF447 to be successful). And therefore also the analysis of such images could probably be highly computerized.
But there was no mention of the US deploying one or two of theirs as far as I know (though they have flown in Australia before), and the Aussie units are not yet ready, correct?