Locating remains of MH370 flight to take time: Angus Houston

The task to find the wreckage of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will take time and may not be resolved in the near future, Australia's former defense chief Angus Houston said in Perth on Tuesday. [Special coverage]

Houston, who also led the newly established Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) which oversees the search for the missing flight told the media that due to the long distance and uncertainty on the last location of the plane, the search mission would be time-consuming. "We need to pursue the search with vigour and we need to do that for some time to come," the former head of Australia's Defense Forces said.

He compared the hunt for MH370 with the sinking of HMAS Sydney off the coast of Western Australia during World War II which was not recovered on the bottom of the ocean until 2008. "Inevitably, if we don't find wreckage on the surface, we are eventually going to have to, probably, in consultation with everybody who has a stake in this, review what we do next," he said.

The three-week search for any trace of the Malaysian jet has been filled with sightings of hundreds of floating objects from satellites and aircraft, but none has been picked up or confirmed as the wreckage of flight MH370.

The massive retrieval effort was again marred with frustration Monday when four orange items of interest, the most promising lead in the search, were confirmed as fishing junk and nothing more significant has been sighted.

A fourth Australian ship, DMS Maritime vessel Seahorse Standard, has left for a search area 1,800 km west of Perth to assist with surface sweep operations.It will join a flotilla of three other Australian vessels and more than six Chinese ships, according to the Department of Defense.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak, scheduled to arrive in Perth on Wednesday, will be briefed on the massive search and recovery efforts during his two-day visit, said Houston.