U.S. Warship Joins Hunt For Missing Plane

The United States has dispatched a destroyer to Indonesia to help search for the missing AirAsia jet. The USS Sampson is expected to arrive later on Tuesday, reports Channel News Asia.

"The US Navy is working closely with the government of Indonesia to identify additional surface or airborne capabilities that best assist their search efforts," the Navy's 7th Fleet said in a statement, according to Agence France Presse.

The search for AirAsia Flight QZ8501 with 162 passengers and crew resumed under stormy skies Tuesday morning. Some 30 ships and 15 aircraft have joined the search for the flight that went missing early Sunday morning.

Search teams have spotted oil on the water and floating debris but they have not proved to have come from the missing jet.

The Los Angeles Times reports: "What might have been an oil slick about 105 nautical miles off Belitung island near the Karimata Strait, which connects the archipelago nation to Singapore, was determined Tuesday morning to be 'a group of rocks," said Bambang Soelistyo, the head of Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency. "A weak signal from an object in the water detected by an Australian surveillance plane turned out to be from a personal locator beacon, not the AirAsia jet's emergency transmitter."

Officials say the search zone is roughly 250-miles wide. It centers in the Java Sea, the plane's last known location, between Sumatra and Borneo.