Sting of the Scorpene

THE MASSIVE LEAK OF RESTRICTED DOCUMENTS ON INDIA’S SUBMARINE PROGRAMME JEOPARDISES NATIONAL SECURITY AND NECESSITATES A CHANGE OF SPECIFICATIONS

- Sandeep Unnithan

In 2000, a few months after the Kargil War, an Indian submarine slipped out of her moorings in Mumbai harbour and headed into the north Arabian Sea. The INS Shalki, one of the navy’s quietest submarines, was on a specific mission. It was to track Pakistan’s newest acquisition, the French-built PNS Khalid, whose deployment had been indicated by Indian intelligence. The Shalki located the Khalid and tailed it for 45 minutes, her passive sonar stealthily recording acoustic readings and frequencies. The Khalid was oblivious to the shadowing and maintained normal transit speed, which allowed the Indian vessel to record its parameters.

The Shalki had, in a single patrol, gained valuable data on Pakistan’s newest undersea combatant, the critical noise and equipment ‘signatures’ that would help the navy’s warships and aircraft track the submarine.

On August 24, the Rupert Murdoch owned broadsheet The Aus­tralian published documents on the vital parameters of India’s under construction fleet of Scorpene class submarines. India had signed a $3 billion deal with France in 2005 to indigenously assemble and build six Scorpene class conventional submarines. The lead boat, the INS Kalvari, is on sea trials and slated to join the navy by the end of the year. Five others, being built at the Mazgaon Docks in Mumbai, will join the navy in one- year intervals by 2022.

The ‘Edward Snowdensized leak’, as the newspaper called the tranche of 22,400 documents, brought to the fore sensitive parameters of the submarines, that make them deadly undersea predators: “the frequencies they gather intelligence at, what levels of noise they make at various speeds and their diving depths, range and endurance and specifications of the submarine’s torpedo launch system and the combat system”.