Leak torpedoes India’s $2bn deal for more French submarines
An Indian Scorpene-class submarine.
The submarine leaks scandal has led India to abandon a $US1.5 billion ($2bn) option to buy three more subs from France as the fallout from the controversy continues to rock the global arms trade.
Australia is stepping up protection of its $50bn Future Submarine Project to ensure a similar devastating data leak of secret information does not happen.
The news comes as France and India intensify their investigation into the cause of the leak, revealed by
The Australian, of 22,400 secret documents detailing the classified capability of India’s Scorpene submarines, with Paris preparing the ground for criminal charges to be laid.
Indian defence officials were quoted at the weekend saying that because of the scandal, India would not take up an option to buy three more French-designed Scorpene subs to add to the six that French shipbuilder DCNS is already building for the Indian navy.
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“We had an agreement for six, and six it will remain,” an Indian Defence Ministry official told Reuters.
A navy officer said India’s priority was to determine how much damage had been caused by the leak amid fears it may seriously compromise the effectiveness of India’s new subs fleet. “No order will be signed, nothing is going to happen now,” the officer, who has been briefed on the submarine data leak, said when asked whether the government planned to enlarge the order.
The news took France’s DCNS — the same company that will design 12 new subs for the Royal Australian Navy — by surprise.
DCNS spokesman Emmanuel Gaudez said the company was “stunned” by the information. “The talks are ongoing with the government and our Indian partners. We have not been informed in any way of such a decision,” he said.
DCNS has been involved in talks with India for more than a year about building three more Scorpene subs for the Indian Navy in a project which would be worth about $US1.5bn in addition to the existing $US3bn program to build six Scorpene subs.
But the leaked secret Scorpene documents, marked “Secret Scorpene India”, disclosed almost the entire combat capability of the subs, including the frequencies used to gather intelligence, the range, endurance, diving depth and survivability of the boats, their magnetic, electromagnetic and infra-red signatures, the parameters of its anti-ship missiles and, most crucially, the noise the subs make at various speeds.
The Edward Snowden-style leak of documents has also energised the Turnbull government, with Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne ordering his department to warn the French company about Australia’s strict requirements for the most stringent information security on the Adelaide-based project.
The Australian understands that further steps have now been taken inside Defence to ensure information security on the project is treated as a stand-alone priority for the first time in dealings between Defence and DCNS.
France this year defeated Germany and Japan in a hotly contested bid to design the navy’s future subs, with its proposed boat to be called the Shortfin Barracuda, a conventional version of the France’s new Barracuda fleet of nuclear-powered subs.
Mr Pyne told
The Australianyesterday that security arrangements for the Australian Future Submarine Project would be updated on a continuous basis as required and that he had full confidence in them.
“The arrangements between the government and DCNS don’t compare with the sale of the Scorpene to the Indian Navy,” Mr Pyne said. “Our fleet of 12 submarines are a new design and build.
“The same security arrangements that we have in place for the Collins class submarine that have served us well for decades will apply to the new design and build and be updated on a continuous basis as they have always been.
“I have full confidence in those security arrangements.”
The submarine leak scandal has shaken the global arms trade as countries scramble to safeguard their information security on key weapons systems, fearing that a single major data leak like the Scorpene leak could render multi-million arms projects almost worthless overnight.
The Scorpene scandal has also affected Malaysia, Chile and Brazil, which are operating, or will soon operate, DCNS-designed Scorpene subs.
India has stumbled in its reaction to the submarine leaks scandal, with Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar trying to play down the damage caused by the leaks, while his own navy has contradicted him, saying it believes the issue is of serious concern.
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has described the leaks as “a malicious act”.
“We will use every means at our disposal to learn the truth ... obviously, it was a malicious act,” he said.
French authorities are investigating the leak and have prepared the grounds for possible prosecution by filing an action with the Paris prosecutor against unknown people for breach of trust, receiving stolen goods and complicity.
DCNS last week obtained an Australian court order preventing
The Australian from posting online any documents from the leaked data.
It is believed the secret documents were removed without authorisation from DCNS in France in 2011 by a former DCNS subcontractor and were then taken via a computer disk to a Southeast Asian nation, from where they were transferred to a company in Singapore.
The documents were then uploaded to an internet server in 2013 for an unknown period of time during which they were vulnerable to hacking by anyone, including foreign intelligence services.
The data was then posted to Australia by regular mail in April 2013 and its existence was revealed publicly for the first time last month by
The Australian.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...s/news-story/6f9921d70c97a9c589b264c9eb5dadad
