A massive leak of documents on India’s new military submarines from French shipbuilder DCNS is the result of a hack, the country’s defence minister said on Wednesday. This news story is related to Latest/145201-India-leak-submarine-papers-doesnt-compromise-security/ – breaking news, latest news, pakistan ne.
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More than 22,000 pages of top secret data on the capabilities of six highly advanced submarines have been leaked, raising alarm bells in the security establishment.
The data tells the submarine crew where on the boat they can speak safely to avoid detection by the enemy. They included thousands of pages on the sub’s sensors and thousands on its communication and navigation systems.
“I understand there has been a case of hacking”, Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told reporters.
An internal audit of procedures to rule out any security compromise is also being undertaken, the Navy said in a statement, a day after it stressed that the leak appears to be “from overseas and not in India”.
The 66-metre-long INS Kalvari is part of an over United States dollars 3.5 billion contract signed by the defence ministry with French firm DCNS in October 2005 to jointly develop six submarines.
Considered to be the ultimate stealth weapon, Indian Navy officials said the six submarines, once inducted, would form the core of the Navy’s submarine arm for the next two decades.
The Government had said yesteerday that the available information was being examined at Integrated Headquarters, Ministry of Defence (Navy) and an analysis was being carried out by the concerned specialists.
DCNS recently won a 34 billion euro contract bid to supply Barracuda submarines to Australian Navy beating Germany’s ThyssenKrupp and Japan’s Mitsubishi and Kawasaki.
The Navy today said it has taken up the Scorpene document leak matter with France’s Directorate General of Armament and has asked the French government to investigate the incident with urgency and share their findings with the Indian side. The government says these are completely different to the Indian submarines.
“I request the Union government to immediately order a high-level inquiry to find out the truth about the leak”, Antony said here.
“The documents should not have been leaked, but there is nothing to be alarmed about”, said the source.
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The variants of the Scorpene submarine are used by Malaysia and Chile. The first is expected to enter service by the end of the year as India seeks to rebuild its dwindling fleet and assert its hegemony over the strategic waters of the Indian Ocean.
