Chinese
Nuclear Sub
It is a question that has animated discussions in
maritime circles recently. A recent report in the Indian media suggests New
Delhi is planning to undertake joint projects with Japan and the United States for the defense of its littoral spaces,
including one for the installation of a sound surveillance sensors (SOSUS)
chain in India’s near seas. In an article for a Indian defense magazine in April this year,
Prasun Sengupta, a well-known analyst and commentator, surmises that New Delhi
is considering Japanese assistance in the construction of an undersea network
of seabed-based sensors stretching from the tip of Sumatra right up to Indira
Point in the Bay of Bengal to prevent Chinese submarines from approaching
Indian exclusive economic zone.
According to Sengupta, besides providing funds for
the upgrading of naval air bases and construction of new electronic/signals
intelligence stations along the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands, Tokyo
plans to finance an undersea optical fiber cable from Chennai to Port Blair.
Once completed, this network is likely to be integrated with the existing
U.S.-Japan “Fish Hook” SOSUS network meant specifically to monitor People’s
Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) submarine activity in the South China Sea and the
Indian Ocean Rim.
The starting point for this collaboration is
supposed to have been Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington last
year, when India and the United States agreed to intensify cooperation in
maritime security. New Delhi is said to have decided to move forward with its
plans to strengthen its near-seas defenses after ASEAN defense ministers at the
ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus gathering in Lankawi, Malaysia, in March
collectively stated their desire for India to play a security role beyond the
Indian Ocean.
There is no official confirmation of these
developments. However, it is entirely possible China’s anti-access/area denial
(A2/AD) plans in Southeast Asia may have served as a trigger for an Indian
response in the Bay of Bengal. In an article last
month, Lyle Goldstein, a well known China specialist, claimed Beijing was in
the process of creating an undersea “Great Wall” in the South China Sea by
establishing an array of ocean-floor acoustic sensors to detect U.S.
submarines. China’s hydrophone system is reportedly modeled on the U.S. Navy’s
SOSUS, meant originally to track Soviet submarines in the mid-1950s. Reports
that the PLAN is on the verge of operationalizing its sensor chain may have
prompted New Delhi to pursue an undersea sensor project in the South Asian
littoral.
The more interesting venture, from an Indian
perspective, is between Japan and the United States in the wider Pacific. Since
the early 2000s, when PLAN submarine patrols are supposed to have turned
aggressive, the U.S. Navy and the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF)
began setting up a chain of fixed arrays to monitor the movement of Chinese
submarines in the East China Sea and South China Sea. This resulted in the
establishment of the “Fish Hook Undersea Defense Line” in early 2005, stretching
from Japan to Southeast Asia with key nodes at Okinawa, Guam, and Taiwan. The
system reportedly consists of two separate networks of hydrophones, one
stretching from Okinawa to southern Kyushu, and the other from Okinawa to
Taiwan.
In July 2013, Beijing claimed that the United States and Japan had established “very large underwater monitoring systems” at the northern and southern ends of Taiwan. One supposedly stretched from Yonaguni to the Senkaku Islands, while the other covered the Bashi Channel down to the Philippines. In addition, Chinese analysts contended, large numbers of hydrophones had been installed “in Chinese waters” close to China’s submarine bases in Qingdao, Xiaopingdao, and Yulin on Hainan Island, even though it wasn’t fully clear if these sensors were all operational.
Fewer doubts remain about the efficacy of an older
version of the SOSUS in the northeastern Pacific (off the Tsugaru Strait) and
the southwestern Pacific (the Tsushima Strait) that Japan and the United States
have jointly managed since the days of the Cold War. Analysts aver that Japan’s
experience with working the system for over six decades has provided Japanese
engineers and technicians with the proficiency and professionalism to install
sea-based sensors in distant littoral spaces, including in the Indian Ocean.
New Delhi, however, would need to consider the
implications of operating sensitive equipment with a foreign partner–
especially the sharing of critical sensor data. In the case of the joint
Japan-U.S. SOSUS, for instance, while the JMSDF and U.S. Navy personnel jointly
manage the JMSDF Oceanographic Observation Centre in Okinawa, all the
information is available to the U.S. Pacific Command,as the facility is under
the operational control of the U.S. Navy. Needless to say, there are concerns
that India may be required to provide its foreign collaborators with a level of
informational access with which the Indian navy may not be too comfortable.
(From The National
Interest) By Abhijit Singh
No comments:
Post a Comment