Underwater Domain Awareness – A New Perspective in the Indo Pacific
Dr. (Cdr.) Arnab Das
Founder and Director, MRC, Pune
Underwater Domain Awareness - A New Perspective in the Indo Pacific
Abstract
The 21 st century India is emerging as a maritime nation with significant strategic push for maritime capability and capacity building. The apex level shift from a continental outlook to a maritime power, ready to assert itself in regional and global geo-strategic and geo-political formulations is a welcome change. The growing recognition of the Indo-Pacific as a single strategic space and a construct to counter growing Chinese dominance in the region, also recognizes India’s centrality to the global influences and increasing role of India in America’s strategic calculations. The domain awareness is always the first step towards any effective capability and capacity building initiative. Thus, effective Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) would be the pre-requisite for any such initiative. The Americans who originated this term, have used MDA as an enabler for the Maritime Operational Threat Response Plan. The National Plan to achieve MDA, declared in Oct 2005 by the US, was part of the National Strategy for Maritime Security. The underwater component of the MDA that may be referred as Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA), has somehow not been given enough attention that it deserves particularly in the IOR, given the security threats that exists, perpetuated by the non-state actors. The first reference of the term Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) is seen in a paper by Lt Cdr David Finch, titled “Comprehensive Underwater Domain Awareness: A Concept Model” in fall 2011, published in Canadian Naval Review. Now here, he makes no reference of MDA while discussing UDA. When we look at India in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), there are multiple unique challenges to achieve effective UDA, both socio-economic and science & technology driven, that are rooted in its geo-strategic origin. Thus, efforts to import technology and strategy from the west have offered limited outcomes. The present understanding in many strategic discourse is that UDA is an extension of MDA, more focussed on security requirements given the volatile regional dynamics. However, the sub-optimal performance of the sonar systems that may be deployed for any situational awareness efforts, in the tropical littoral waters of the IOR will present significant challenges. Thus massive acoustic capability and capacity building would be the core requirement for any UDA framework. The fragmented approach by the stakeholders namely the national security apparatus, the blue economic entities, the environment & the disaster management authorities and the science & technology providers has always limited the resource availability for any indigenous efforts to overcome local challenges. The UDA framework proposed in this work goes beyond being a mere underwater extension of the MDA formulation as understood so far, and attempts to bring a more comprehensive formulation that facilitates pooling of resources and synergising of efforts across stakeholders both at the national as well as regional level to be able to truly participate in the Indo-Pacific strategic space. The proposed UDA framework ensures Safe, Secure, Sustainable Growth model for all in the region to complement the Security And Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) vision announced in Mar 2015.
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Dr. (Cdr.) Arnab Das
Founder and Director, MRC, Pune
Dr (Cdr) Arnab Das, Director and Founder of MRC, Pune. Dr Das is an ex Naval officer with 2 decades of active services and PhD holder from IIT Delhi with specialization in Underwater Acoustics. He has worked on several projects and has a plethora of publications to his credit.