Is Parrikar downplaying the Scorpene leak threat?

One of the six Scorpene submarines – INS Kalvari – is expected to begin yet another round of sea-trail.

The newly revealed documents, marked “Restricted Scorpene India” with Indian Navy insignia on it, give details about the sonar system of the submarines which is used to gather intelligence underwater. The man, the publication said, called himself a whistleblower and wanted to demonstrate that a serious security breach existed in a dangerously uncontrolled form, and that France has already lost control of secret data on India’s submarines.

“The matter is being taken up with concerned foreign governments through diplomatic channels to verify the authenticity of the reports”, the Indian Navy said.

DCNS said it could not immediately authenticate the documents, but would not rule out that the leak was part of an “economic war” waged by the competitors.

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 before being passed to a branch of that company in a second Southeast Asian nation. It said its operational deployment will not be affected. What has been shocking is that numerous sub-contractors who were engaged by the DCNS left the project in course of time, and there is every possibility that any one of them or their officials might have even sold the documents to other agencies.

However, he added that there are a few pockets of concern as the defence ministry was assuming the worst case scenario as well.

DCNS and TKMS are now locked in another competition for a lucrative contract to replace Norway’s fleet of aging Ula-class submarines.

When asked if the French manufacturer should have informed India about the leak which is said to have happened in 2011, Parrikar said the government would wait for an official reply from the firm.

Australian journalist Cameron Stewart, who broke the Scorpene Submarine data leak story on The Australian, has contradicted India’s statement that the leak does not compromise the Indian Navy’s secrecy.

“He says he is a whistleblower and maintains that revealing to the world, via The Australian, that this classified data exists in a dangerously uncontrolled form is worthwhile because it will serve Australia’s interests even if it causes an global furore”, said the report. “The submarine they are building for India is not the submarine we will be building for Australia”.

India has placed an order with the French Defence contractor DCNS for designing the Scorpene exclusively for India involving an expenditure of 3.45 billion dollars. If the probe finds that the data released matkches with the versions of the submarines that the Indian Navy is set to induct, then the capability of it will be compromised.

A request was made to the French government to investigate at its end how the documents came out in public.