NEW DELHI: India has ordered a probe into the leaking of secret documents by an Australian paper, detailing a French-designed Scorpene submarine it is building, and analysts quantified the damage as equal to decades of snooping by Pakistan and China.
The leak of sensitive information — first reported by The Australian on Wednesday — could “provide an intelligence bonanza if obtained by India’s strategic rivals, such as Pakistan or China”, the newspaper wrote.
A retired Indian naval officer has termed the leak “potentially fairly disastrous”.
The Wire news portal said 22,000 pages outlining the “secret combat capability” of the six Scorpene submarines France is supplying to India have been put out on the internet.
India has contracted to purchase six Scorpene-class submarines from the French company DCNS Group at a cost of $3 billion, the first of which is already undergoing sea trials. A second is currently being assembled with French help at the Mazagon docks in Mumbai, following which four more will be produced and commissioned.
In initial comments, retired Vice-Admiral A.K. Singh, a former submariner, told The Wire on Wednesday that the documents were “no doubt being closely studied in Islamabad and Beijing... I am going through them slowly but I reckon this has saved the Chinese and Pakistanis 20-30 years of espionage”.
The Wire said that Singh later modified his assessment, saying the damage might not be as great as he had initially feared “as long as the frequency of the submarine’s radiated noise” — which The Australian redacted — remained a secret.
However, it does in that case put India’s security in the trust Delhi can have in an Australian newspaper, if also in the hands of those who leaked the documents to the paper.
The Wire quoted the officer as saying that if the frequency were to leak, that would be disastrous for the crew as it would enable an enemy to use different sonar buoys to locate and identify the submarine, which otherwise had a noise level that was below the noise of the sea.
Other news reports said the French makers of the submarine suspected a commercial rivalry in the leak.
According to NDTV, the Scorpenes, being built for $3.5 billion at the state-run Mazagon shipyard, are considered some of the most advanced of their class in the world. They are so silent underwater that they are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to detect.
“But now their sonar capabilities, the noise they generate and details of the combat system they are armed with are totally exposed,” NDTV said.
“I understand there has been a case of hacking,” said Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. “We will find out what has happened.”
Indian Navy sources have been quoted as saying they are confident that the leak took place “outside India”. They said the documents appeared to show different configurations than what was finalised for India, and stressed that “the damage does not seem to be substantial” even as analysts suggested that was not correct.
Ship maker DCNS said in a statement that French national security authorities were investigating the size, seriousness and cause of the leak, which, it said, could be part of “an economic war” with competitors who it beat for a massive $38bn contract in Australia.
Recently India deployed Russian-designed BrahMos cruise missiles along the China border evincing concerns from Beijing. However, Russia, which has the designer insights into the missiles technology is a close ally of China in the Shanghai nations club.
Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2016
