My question is why didn't they send long range drones to inspect the floating debris sites more closely? Or did they? It seems to me that this whole search seems full of loose ends and lacks thorough investigation. eg. RQ-4A Global Hawk with 3,000 mile range. Apparently it can survey as much as 40,000 square miles (100,000 km2) of terrain a day.
The false pings still don't appear to be clear as to their cause. Yet have they repeated the tests to verify the source of the false pings? i.e. ships bar fridge, other part of ship or the TPL-25 itself?
Could there be a public checklist reporting web site that site that highlights every key piece of evidence and states whether the evidence has been ruled in or out and provide the reasoning as to why. Seems the data needs to be open to public scrutiny.
Seems to me that exhaustive and complete verification is required, if they are to eliminate the noise and really focus on the most probable likelihoods. Their current approach seems quite spurious.