Scorpene Leak: A Serious Threat to India's National Security

At a time when Indian Navy’s Submarine Arm is beleaguered by delays in replacement of its ageing submarine fleet, Scorpene leak could be a source of serious stress for our operational planners...

 The Importance of Scorpene Program: The news of leak of more than 22,000 pages of classified data about India’s Scorpene submarine program has shook the defence establishments in both India and France. To make matters worse, it has come at a time when India is down to a force level of only 9 Russian 877-KM Sindhughosh Class and 4 German HDW Type-209 Shishumar Class boats. All these, barring INS Sindhushastra, are between 22 to 30 years old and will soon be in the twilight of their service so they need to be replaced with newer, technologically advanced boats sooner than later. Towards the end of the last century, the submarine arm had made a very ambitious 30-year perspective (acquisition) plan which envisaged a force level of 24 next-generation conventional boats by the year 2030. Unfortunately, it took the government itself close to 5 years to approve the plan and then, as is common with defence programs in our country, inordinate delays have hit the plan at regular intervals. The first boat as per this plan should have got commissioned by 2005 but here we are in the second half of 2016 and the boat has just about started its sea trials. We have seen in the past that these kinds of scandals (Bofors, HDW etc) more often than not derail or shake our weapon procurement plans and set our defence preparedness back by many years.

The Threat: Coming to the bigger issue at hand, which is the leak of sensitive data about the boat, it is like your trade secrets getting into your competitors’ hands which would sound a death knell for your products.  In case of a submarine, the death knell would be for the personnel manning it. Of the 20,000 plus pages that it has, The Australian has made public only 18 pages on its website but these 18 pages have enough explosive material to give the would-be Scorpene crew sleepless nights. It has data on the sub’s sonar operating parameters and radiated noise data. The other (not revealed) pages contain just about everything that you would want to know about the Scorpene. Thankfully, the paper blacked out the figures before publishing them but the fact remains that the figures are there with whom they should not have been and may reach our adversaries sooner or later (God save us if they already have them). It would give away the advantage Scorpene would have over enemy ships and subs as it would allow them to devise and utilize their tactics and countermeasures more effectively should they come up against her in combat. Stealth is a submarine’s biggest weapon; without it, she is no good as a tool of sea control and sea denial which is what she is meant for.

Some of us would suggest changing these parameters altogether but it is not as simple as it may sound. A military equipment undergoes rigorous trials, first on the test bed followed by the field before it is cleared for production and induction into service. Doing this in the present case would mean the program setting back by few more years which, in my opinion, Indian Navy could ill afford.
Therefore, if the leaked information is indeed authentic, I would stick my neck out and say that the program is as good as sunk.

Timing of the Leak: It is believed that these papers were leaked way back in 2011; so the question is, why the leaks now? Well, I can think of few reasons:

First, the person who had these papers could not find a buyer for whatever reasons: either there were doubts on the authenticity of the documents or they could not agree on the price.

Secondly, recently, Australia awarded its Collins Class (submarine) replacement contract to DCNS (the French firm which incidentally is also the manufacturer of Scorpene) to develop the Shortfin Barracuda Class submarines (diesel electric subs with an option to have nuclear propulsion in future) after a hard fought battle with German HDW Type 216 and Japanese Soryu Class boats (diesel-electric boats). It is possible that someone did not like the $50 billion deal going the DCNS way and wanted to show it in bad light so the leak was engineered after obtaining the papers.

Thirdly, I also have information that apart from showing interest in leasing another nuclear attack submarine (SSN) from Russia, India was keen to collaborate with DCNS in developing its indigenised SSNs (the French firm is also helping Brazil develop its own SSN) much to the chagrin of the USA which was keen to sell their hardware to us. Under these circumstance, it could be anybody’s guess as to who would benefit from this ‘timely’ leak.

Conclusion: Notwithstanding the reasons for the leak, it has serious repercussions for Indian Navy’s Submarine Arm. It poses serious threat to our submarine’s safety in the hostile environment that she would have to operate during war or ‘preparation for war’. Indian Navy needs to find the source of the leak as soon as possible and seek to contain the damage caused by it. If the leak has happened from DCNS side, they must be made to pay for it; whichever way the Indian Navy feels it would suit the best interests of our country and National Security.