#ScorpeneLeak

Okay, since I had the opportunity to work on-board a DCNS made #Scorpene class submarine undergoing some upgrade work off the coast of Malaysia — RMN/KD-TAR. Most of us heard about the #ScorpeneLeak yesterday, what is it? Is it something to really be worried about? Or, is it a TRP stunt by the media houses and political stuntmen to divert attention off something other — Kashmir, may be?

Let’s start by asking few questions, following the answer round.

1. What is submarine? How does it work?
2. What is it’s navigation methodologies?
3. How do we determine it’s signature? What different signatures are there?
4. Can the signature of each submarine be changed? Does it mean, we will incur huge costs?

Answers.

1. Submarine is a underwater vessel that use the principles of buoyancy and forces related. To control its buoyancy, the submarine has ballast tanks and auxiliary, or trim tanks, that can be alternately filled with water or air. When the submarine is on the surface, the ballast tanks are filled with air and the submarine’s overall density is less than that of the surrounding water.
2. Inertial navigation - a device which uses gyroscopes and accelerometers to estimate the course through water without any external input or data. The devices on military submarines are very sophisticated and highly classified, so not much of the data is available until I intend ti service or buy one — which given my position I can not. As to depth of the ocean, navies make it a practice of having the best maps of bottom bathymetry in the regions where they operate submarines. In general submarines prefer to stay far far away from the ocean floor, mostly operate at five to twenty times the draft size, here the draft is 5.4 meters. Tides typically cause a change in ocean depth of about 1 or 2 meters and so are mostly negligible. No submarine commander wants to be so close to the bottom that they have to worry about the meter difference between high and low tide. Submarines can very accurately know their depth below the surface just by measuring hydrostatic pressure which is essentially equivalent to the weight of the water above the huge water tight vessel. GPS signals do not penetrate the ocean - they only way to get a GPS position fix is to poke an antenna above the water, making itself vulnerable to enemy eyes and hears. Ocean currents does play a huge role, but I have no knowledge of it. Intertial navigation works by measuring accelerations - not speed through water - so it really doesn’t matter if the submarine is propelling itself through water or partly being carried along by a current.
3. Signature. For a submarine to be tracked and detected, it essential has three signatures, five in case of a Scorpene. Radiation from it’s paint, SONAR and it’s operating systems frequency i.e. the vessels noise — the mostly noticeable quantity. SONAR, though is the best one tells the frigate or submarine about the other vessels, “hey I’m here and I’ve tracked you — come tail me now!” And, no Captain likes that. 😉
4. Each time the submarine docks at its base station, the interior setup is changed with components from another submarine. Change of materials inside changes the acoustic signature. We cannot deal with the SONAR issue but that is only when you are pinged for or you ping for. Next, once in 90 days, the vessels wears some parts of its paint and paintwork needs to be done and that to some extent changes it’s signature again. So, we have now a change of its two signatures in its non-combatant mode. For the other signature, join the navy as a service engineer. 😆

So, if you ask me today — can I sleep in peace inside the under constructed submarines? Yes, you can. These vessels are part of a huge project with just one in sea trials — INS Kalvari, S50, due to get permanent position in September. So, basically we are testing it and have not set ourselves a signature anyway.

What is being mostly leaked is a 22000 pages of technical handbook, of whose 6000 pages I had access to. It’s just a technical manual and nothing much. Every seller gives a devices service manual, so this is it by DCNS to a potential buyer.

Given the opportunity to explain the codes of secrecy, the manual was marked “RESTRICTED.” It is not a god-damn secret document, just another document which you should not see but even if you do nothing much matters. It’s like a “Stick No Bills” in a wall and still do activity. Worry if it’s classified/ highly secret, else go FTW!

What worries me is not those of 22000 pages, but a file from the naval inventory went out which had a defense seal on it. Media will sell it like anything, focus more on what you aren’t focusing on — internal instability, economic growth, or something similar. Leave defence out of your mind, it’s in good hands.

That’s it.