Finding things in the sea is basically a question of radar reflectivity and the search area. A ship in the north Atlantic? Its big flat steel sides reflect lots

Finding things in the sea is basically a question of radar reflectivity and the search area. A ship in the north Atlantic? Its big flat steel sides reflect lots of radar signals, and the search area, while large, is (compared to the pacific and indian oceans) rather small. I don't doubt that anyone looking for this ship would find it fairly quickly. The problems with MH370 were twofold. One - initially nobody actually knew where it was. The search area was HUGE, and for the first few days there was much less information about the aircraft location. The eventual search area was selected based on quite detailed analysis of the satellite pings the aircraft sent. This took time. It took 9 days for the search to even start in the southern Indian Ocean. Even once they'd figured out roughly where it had gone down, the search area was still astronomically big. Two - aircraft wreckage isn't nearly as reflective to radar as a ship. An aluminium panel floating flat in the ocean will have a very similar reflection profile to the surrounding water. I think you need a fourth option. Large countries definitely have a technical advantage, but the military still has to obey the laws of physics. Large budgets and no legal restrictions probably put military technology a generation or two ahead of comparable civilian technology - it's better, but it's not magic.