“Marked “Restricted Scorpene India”, the DCNS documents detail the most sensitive combat capabilities of India’s new $US3 bn submarine fleet and would provide an intelligence bonanza if obtained by India’s strategic rivals, such as Pakistan or China”, the report said.
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“This serious matter is thoroughly investigated by the proper French national authorities for defense security”, said DCNS spokesperson Marion Bonnet.
Australian defence industry minister Christpher Ptne said in a statement that the leak will have “no bearing on the Australian government’s future submarine programme”.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said it was important to note the submarine DCNS was building for India was a completely different model to the one it will build for Australia and the leaked information was a few years out of date. “We will find out what has happened”. “In the case of India, where a DCNS design is built by a local company, DCNS is the provider and not the controller of technical data”, DCNS was quoted as saying by The Australian.
Indian and French authorities will launch an investigation into the reported leak of documents related to Scorpene submarines. “The documents that have been posted on the website by an Australian news agency have been examined and do not pose any security compromise as the vital parameters have been blacked out”, said a statement released by the Indian Navy.
“What I understand is that there is hacking”, Mr. Parrikar said, adding that the data can not be complete as the final assembly is done by India.
Speaking to reporters in New Delhi, he said the leak did not appear to have come from India.
The newspaper published only a fraction of those documents, and these had been redacted, meaning that sensitive details relating to the Scorpene’s design and stealth capabilities did not enter the public domain.
Employees stand near Indian Navy’s first indigenously-built Scorpene attack submarine at Mazagon Dock in Mumbai, India, April 6, 2015.
It recently beat Germany’s ThyssenKrupp and a Japanese-government backed bid by Mitsubishi and Kawasaki in Australia for a 34 billion euro contract to supply the Barracuda next generation of submarines to the Australia navy.
India is now building six Scorpene-class submarines in partnership with DCNS.
The data is believed to have passed through firms in South-east Asia before eventually being mailed to a company in Australia, the newspaper said.
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The Indian Navy ordered six Scorpene submarines from DCNS.
