Its part of my conspiracy theory and contributor to the noise of the issue, that there is NO SUCH THING as a pinger locator. The U.S. govt is just calling it that so that we think we have such a thing when in reality the device they are using is a sophisticated part of our military defense hardware.
We feel pressure to find this plane, and probably have some capability to find it (or maybe have already found it) BUT we don’t want to tip our hand on our capabilities in the interest of keeping these technologies secret.
So instead of pulling out and calling on our military “top-secret submarine detecting systems”, we call it a ‘pinger locator’ and imply that this was its intended and sole use all along.
By the way, the Chinese took down the plane intentionally as a means to determine how sophisticated our defense systems are in finding such items. Its part of their plan.
you can thank me for informing you of the reality when it comes out in my new book.