India “has requested the French government to investigate this incident with urgency and share their findings”, the defense ministry also said, adding it was conducting an internal audit and taking up the matter with foreign governments to find out more about the leak.
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Navy sources of India said that the leak has took place “outside India”, they are confident about the fact that the documents appeared to be in different configurations than what was finalized for India, and strongly implied that “the damage does not seem to be substantial” even as analysts suggested it as incorrect.
The daily said, about 22,400 pages have leaked, it includes details of combat capability of the Scorpene-class submarine DCNS.
Dubbing it as the “biggest defence disaster” of recent time, he said it has jeopardised the sole initiative to build six Scorpene submarines in collaboration with French company DCNS at a cost of U.S. dollar 3.5 billion (Rs 23,500 crore approximately) by government-owned Mazagaon Dock Ship Builders Ltd at Mumbai.
Meanwhile, France on Wednesday said it has taken “very seriously” the issue of leak of sensitive documents on advanced submarines being built for the Indian Navy and would work with India very closely with transparency.
DCNS, whose two-third is owned by the French government, will be designing 12 new submarines for Australia; deal is worth 50 bn United States dollars, and the leak might compromise the security of classified data on the submarines, as per the report.
“Therefore, I don’t see any reason to worry because of the allegation of data leak that was reported because it does not affect our operations or the security of TLDM’s submarines”, Mohd Johari told Malay Mail Online, referring to the Royal Malaysian Navy. What I understand is there is a hacking. It also discloses magnetic, electromagnetic and infra-red data as well as the specifications of the submarines torpedo launch system and the combat system, the newspaper said. “For such an inquiry to be fair, it has to be headed by an independent neutral authority of the level of a sitting Supreme Court judge with officials from the armed forces, naval and Military Intelligence, IB or other specialised agencies as its members”, he said.
They included thousands of pages on the sub’s sensors and thousands on its communication and navigation systems.
The leak, the Congress said, has “put a question mark on India’s maritime security and jeopardised the initiative to build six Scorpene submarines”.
Admitting that it is a case of hacking, Parrikkar said he will get into the details of the suspected leak of the classified documents and data on India’s Scorpene submarines project.
Though the leaked documents have the potential to negate the operational usefulness of these submarines, especially if it is available to Pakistan and China, top sources in the navy claimed these documents are not the same as the ones with the Indian Navy for construction of these submarines.
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Such leaks will “allow submarine hunters to refine their searches rather than just searching large swathes of water”, he said.
