On Thursday, The Australian newspaper uploaded a fresh tranche of leaked documents relating to information about operating instructions of underwater warfare system of the six Scorpene submarines which are being built in India by French firm DCNS.
Here is what the latest set of documents has to reveal:
Sonar system: It talks about technical specifications of the sonar system of the submarines which is used to gather intelligence underwater. It also gives details about the degree and frequency at which it will function.
Operating Instruction Manual: It provides details on the manual that talks about how to select a target for weapon firing, weapon configuration selection, among others.
How has the Navy reacted?
Though the Navy has not yet officially reacted to the release of new documents, sources maintained that it does not compromise national security. They said the same information about a submarine was on “many naval defence websites”.
Will this affect India’s defence capabilities?
“On the face of it, these documents are basic operating manual. You buy any goods from the market, it will come with an operating manual,” defence analyst Commodore Uday Bhaskar (Retd), Director of Society of Policy Studies told PTI.
He further said that the revelation does not make our submarines vulnerable.
“It is more like basic operating instructions for the user,” he said.
How have the papers been leaked?
The paper said it has been told that the secret data was removed from DCNS by a former sub-contractor in 2011 and taken to a private company in Southeast Asia. It was then passed on to a branch of that company in a second Southeast Asian nation. A disk containing the data filed was then posted in regular mail to a company in Australia.
DCNS is focusing its investigation on former employees and sub-contractors involved in the project. At this stage it is not thought that the leak came from India.
(Feature image source: Reuters)
