MH370 The United States military remain committed to render assistance to Malaysia should the missing Flight MH370 be found.

According to US Pacific Command (PACOM) Commander Admiral Samuel J Locklear III, its forces are "standing by".

“We have an agreement with Malaysia. We are standing by if they need assistance,” he told Malaysiakini in a meeting with senior journalists at the PACOM headquarters in Camp HM Smith in Hawaii as part of the East West Center senior journalists seminar.

He, however, played down security concerns over such large sharing of military assets and information in the "largest search and rescue operations in the history of mankind", comprising over 26 nations.

"I have no concerns about exchange of information, use of aircraft (in the search).

"But I have indicated that we today need more understanding about the Asean region and having a common operations picture of what is happening in this part of the world."

Locklear said at this time in history, there is the "capability to do better than what happened with (MH)370."

"We (the international community) did a thorough job calculating where we thought the plane could possibly be," he said.

Largely heralded as a success in multinational cooperation, various media reports have, however, claimed a certain level of reluctance in countries to share sensitive surveillance and satellite data, territorial waters and airspace.

The Beijing-bound Boeing 777 disappeared in the early hours of March 8 with 239 passengers and crew onboard.

The latest is that the  search area in the south Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have gone down after mysteriously changing course shortly after takeoff, could be expanded further.

According to AP , Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, ( right ) said the search site could be expanded further south pending analysis of two satellite calls made by ground crew to the crew onboard shortly after it fell off the radar before going silent.

The analysis reportedly suggests that the plane could have altered course earlier than initially perceived.

The multi-national hunt for the Malaysia Airlines plane, led by Australia, is the most expensive in aviation history.

A Reuters report said that Malaysia has spent over RM27.6 million in the operations, while that of  countries such as China, US and Australia have exceeded hundreds of million ringgit.

AP reported that Truss and Malaysian Transport Minsiter Liow Tiong Lai in fact, yesterday signed an agreement for the two nations to share costs of search, the new phase is expected to take a year to a tune of AUS$52million (RM153million).

A months-long search for the aircraft with the US defence's towed pinger locator and Bluefin-21 underwater drone failed to locate the wreckage, private Dutch firm Fugro was on Aug 5 awarded the contract to search a 60,000 sq km radius off Western Australia.