Originally Posted by rickair7777

Beyond ludicrous.

Most folks cannot even begin to comprehend how vast the south pacific is. Most fighters have a very limited combat radius without airborne refueling, which takes lengthy advance coordination to arrange.

Defensive fighter capability (interception) defends a specific area or border. AR is typically not required because the fighters are based close to the defended area. Response time in minutes. If the missing flight penetrated the wrong ADIZ, it could have been intercepted by fighters staged for that purpose.

Long-range offensive/strike ops require massive, complex coordination which takes 72-96 hours to arrange. That's what AR is used for.

An aerial search would utilize long-range/long-endurance patrol aircraft, and that's exactly what happened... the next day.

Also nobody in Oz or the USN likely even knew about this until they turned on CNN the next morning. Their job is not to patrol the vast reaches of the Pacific for lost jets. The ATC facilities which lost contact with MH don't have a red-phone to the pentagon.

That said, if it had approached a US ADIZ, it certainly would have been detected, transponder or not, and intercepted.