The news agency reports that helicopters "are being dispatched" to survey possible damage today.

Please tell me the tense applied in the above sentence, especially the for the words in commas.

I believe that is the present continuous tense, but am open to suggestions.

It is "ed" in despatched which signifies it can't b present continuous tense.
Its some other tense. Don't know which 1 is it..plz help

I'm not qualified answer you, but if i should give it a try, then i would say it is the passive form of the present continuous. Let me try to write down a table:


-simple present -> passive simple present
"i eat cheese" -> "The cheese is eaten by me"
-present continuous -> passive present continuous
"i am eating cheese" -> "The cheese is being eaten by me"
-present perfect -> passive present perfect
"i have already eaten cheese" -> "the cheese has already been eaten by me"
-present perfect continuous -> passive present perfect
"i have been eating cheese" -> ***


-simple past -> passive simple past
"i ate cheese" -> "the cheese was eaten by me"
-past continuous -> passive past continuous
"i was eating cheese" -> "the cheese was being eaten by me"
-past perfect -> passive past perfect
"i had already eaten cheese" -> "the cheese had been eaten by me"
-past perfect continuous -> passive past perfect continuous
"i had been eating cheese" -> ***



the passive form of the present/past perfect continuous shouldn't exist, if am not getting any mistake (in case they should become something like "the cheese has been being eaten by me" and "the cheese had been being eaten by me").


Bye.

Here's a cool test on verb tenses. (Well, I think it's cool!)