Daily Times

SYDNEY/PARIS: India is investigating the extent to which secrets about French Scorpene submarines being built in the country have been compromised, Indian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday, after a leak of documents related to its combat capabilities.

The leak, which was first reported in the Australian newspaper, contains more than 22,000 pages outlining the secret capabilities of six submarines that French builder DCNS has designed for the Indian Navy.

The newspaper, The Australian, reported that the leaked data includes descriptions of what frequencies the submarines use to gather intelligence, where a crew can speak safely to avoid detection, and specifications of the torpedo launch system.

“I understand there has been a case of hacking,” Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said. “We will find out what has happened.” The submarines are being built at a state-run shipyard in Mumbai and the first one was expected to go into service by the end of year, the first step in the Indian Navy’s effort to rebuild its dwindling fleet. The massive leak has also raised doubts about the security of DCNS’s submarine project in Australia where it won $38.06 billion contract to build the next generation of the submarines.

The Australian government, which signed a big budget deal in April with DCNS for 12 submarines of a different class, said that the leak shouldn’t affect the Australian ships.

DCNS beat out Germany’s ThyssenKrupp AG, while a Japanese-government backed bid by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, in a blow to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to develop defence export capabilities as part of a more muscular security agenda.

The leaked documents cover the Scorpene-class model and do not contain any details of the vessel currently being designed for the Australian fleet.

It could not immediately authenticate the documents, but would not rule out that the leak was part of an “economic war” waged by the competitors it beat in the contest for the Australian contract, DCNS said.

“For now we don’t know if the information is correct,” a DCNS spokeswoman said. “The competition is more and more hard and all means can be used in this context.”

“There is India, Australia and other prospects, and other countries could raise legitimate questions over DCNS and its part of the tools in economic war,” she said.

Shipmaker DCNS said in a statement that French national security authorities are investigating the size, seriousness and cause of the leak.

Thales, which owns 35 per cent of the shipbuilder, could not immediately be reached for comment outside normal European business hours. The French Defence Ministry declined to make an immediate comment.

Thales was down more than 2pc in early trading, while the wider French blue-chip index was down 0.75 percent.