Underwater Domain Awareness

Case for India

Prakash Panneerselvam, Rajaram Nagappa, R Ganesh

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000603040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the emerging underwater challenges facing India in the Indian Ocean region. With major economic powers like China, the United States, and Russia modernising their submarine fleets and building advanced unmanned underwater vessels to enhance surveillance capabilities, the competition in the Indo-Pacific underwater domain has intensified.

The book

· Focuses on the issues of detecting, tracking, and classifying submarines/underwater drones in the Indian Ocean.

· Examines the Indian Navy's present anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities in combating underwater threats and discusses the scope for inter-agency, inter-departmental cooperation framework to monitor the undersea activity in the region.

· Studies the naval composition and strengths of India and other countries in the neighbourhood and reviews maritime domain awareness practices employed by leading navies including NATO for submarine detection.

· Assesses the technology development efforts to deal with these challenges and brings out recommendations.

An expert study of undersea surveillance, this book will be indispensable to students and researchers of military and strategic studies, defence studies, critical security, conflict resolution, intelligence studies, and security studies. It will also be of interest to governments, naval establishments, think tanks, and public policy institutes.

1 IntroductionUnderwater Challenges in the Indian Ocean

DOI: 10.4324/9781003298380-1

The Indian Ocean occupies a geostrategically important place in global politics. The geographical location and combination of various factors like the presence of major economies, nuclear power countries, and strategic sea lines of communication (SLOCs) connecting energy and trade routes across the Indian Ocean make this region the fulcrum of global politics and security. Major geopolitical challenges to the Indian Ocean emerge from two considerations. Firstly, the maritime nations depend on the Indian Ocean for trade, energy, and commerce prospects. Secondly, the regional and extra-regional powers view the Indian Ocean as a ‘strategic space’ coming under the maxim, whoever controls the space, controls the region. As a maritime power, India shoulders a huge responsibility in safeguarding the crucial sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. Strategic experts claim that India’s national security can be best guaranteed only by expanding India’s security perimeter and achieving a position of influence in the Indian Ocean. India’s strategic space extends from the western shores of Australia to the eastern coast of Africa, which includes the area between the Strait of Malacca in the east to the Strait of Hormuz in the west. To safeguard and control this strategic space demands an effective situational awareness in place. Technology plays an important role in the selection and deployment of sensors for exercising situational awareness on the sea surface and underwater domains. While one can deploy sensors on the land, sea, air, and space for monitoring surface traffic, one needs a different strategy for monitoring the movement of underwater platforms. India has adequate capability and capacity for the surveillance of surface movements, and it needs to prioritize the development of a comprehensive underwater domain awareness (UDA) strategy (Gokhale, 2020), which is the need of the hour.

Geopolitical Features of the Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest ocean in the world. It covers an area of about 78 million square kilometres, comprising about 14 percent of the earth’s land surface and 20 percent of the earth’s water surface (Central Intelligence Agency, n.d.). It includes, amongst others, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Andaman Sea. The Indian Ocean is surrounded by land on three sides – on the west by the African continent, the north by Southwest Asia, and the east by Western Australia. As a major sea lane, it connects Asia and Africa with Europe and America. Plush with living and non-living resources, from marine biodiversity to oil and natural gas, the Indian Ocean is economically crucial to Africa, Asia, and Australia/Oceania – the three continents bordering it, and the world at large. The Indian Ocean is a rich energy source with the oil fields of the Gulf, Indonesia, and Brunei having significant share of the world’s energy basket.

The Indian Ocean is a critical waterway for global trade and commerce. It is also one of the busiest maritime traffic routes (Davies, 2019). About half of the world’s containerized cargo, one-third of its bulk cargo, and two-thirds of its oil shipment pass through the Indian Ocean every year (Bhattacharjee, 2020). The preeminent status of the Indian Ocean as an international SLOC remains well established. Therefore, the security of chokepoint is recognized more than ever. With the globalization of the world economy and the corresponding dependence of a greater number of nations on foreign trade, the Indian Ocean has assumed even greater importance, serving over one-third of the world’s seaborne trade. Table 1.1 indicates the major chokepoints and maritime traffic around these straits connecting the Indian Ocean with the rest of the world.

Table 1.1 Key Indicators of Shipping Channels in the Indian Ocean Region

Strait	Water depth (m)	Width (Km)	Vessel traffic (thousands of ships/year)	Oil throughput (10,000 barrels/day)	Connected sea routes
Malacca Strait	25	37	8	1,520	Arabian Sea, South China Sea
Sunda Strait	20	24	3	-	Java Sea, Indian Ocean
Lombok Strait	150	11.5	Less than thousand ships	-	Java Sea, Indian Ocean
Strait of Hormuz	10.5	56	4	1,700	Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea
Bab al-Mandab Strait	150	26	2	380	Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and Arabian Peninsula
Suez Canal	22.5	34	2	320	The Mediterranean Sea, Arabian Peninsula

Source: Compiled by author from (Numbers of Ships Reporting Under STRAITREP, 2021), (ERIA, 2016).

Since a large volume of international maritime trade and energy transits through the crucial sea lanes of the Indian Ocean, this route is a lifeline for global economies, and disruption to these sea lanes will practically affect the growth and economy of many nations. Similarly, the chokepoints in Southeast Asia – mainly the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok Straits – practically affect the economic vitality of the Indo-Pacific region (see Table 1.1). The sheer volume of products and energy goods transiting these straits is almost half of the world’s merchant fleet capacity and one-third of the world’s ships (US Energy Information Administration, 2017). The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean and the chokepoints in Southeast Asia have great geostrategic importance for India, the United States, Europe, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and other Southeast Asian countries. Given the fact that the northern Indian Ocean is a hub of maritime activity, it has significant influence on the economic and security interests of the countries in this region.

The situation is volatile in some regions bordering the Indian Ocean. Internal conflicts, terrorism, and state of lawlessness in some of the countries, especially in Somalia, Yemen, and Syria, have turned the region into a hotbed of piracy, drug smuggling, gun-running, and human trafficking. Issues like Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) Fishing have aggravated the security scenario. For example, the narcotics trafficking from Pakistan’s coast to other parts of the Indian Ocean is weakening state functionary and leading to major law and order situations in the littorals (Panneerselvam, 2021). These factors not only add instability to the region but also pose a serious security risk to merchant vessels passing through the region. The hijacking ships by Somali pirates for ransom between 2008 and 2014 is a good example to show how illegal activity can disrupt global energy and trade.

In response to maritime piracy in the Indian Ocean, navies from the United States, the UK, the European Union, China, and Japan have deployed their naval ships for counter-piracy activity in the western Indian Ocean. China at times has deployed two warships in the region to protect the SLOCs; later, it developed a naval base in Djibouti to sustain its maritime operations in the region. The full-fledged Chinese naval base is equipped to support the PLA Navy’s activity in the Indian Ocean and Africa. Japan too has established a naval base in Djibouti to expand Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force (JMSDF) activities in the region. Not to mention, the US Navy, which has an important stake in the region and has a naval base in Diego Garcia, a British Indian Ocean territory, to actively monitor and support the US forces in the region. Through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Maritime Silk Road (MSR), China is reinforcing its presence in the region and views the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean as critical pathways to achieve energy and trade security. Therefore, maritime domain awareness (MDA) has become an essential requirement for the People Liberation Army (PLA) navy from a security perspective. India is wary of Chinese intentions in the region and is keeping up with its modernization programme by building surface and subsurface naval capabilities to deter Chinese provocation and to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: Underwater Challenges in the Indian Ocean
• 2 Undersea Threat Environment in the Indian Ocean
• 3 The Evolution of Undersea Surveillance
• 4 Emerging Era in Anti-Submarine Warfare
• 5 Assessing India’s ASW Capability in the Indian Ocean
• 6 Conclusion: Unfolding Security Scenario in the Indo-Pacific Ocean
• Index