Aware and Secure

Adm. Arun Prakash (retd)

In the 21st century it will be possible to find, fix, or track and target anything that moves on the surface of the earth. This emerging reality will change the conduct of warfare….” US Air Force Doctrine

Mid-August 2006 saw the container ship MV OEL Vision lying dead in the water with machinery failure, and being steadily pushed by furious monsoon winds towards an oil rig in the Bombay High complex. With memories of the previous July’s catastrophic oil rig fire (triggered by a colliding vessel) still fresh in everyone’s minds, there was palpable tension in the Navy, Coast Guard and ONGC Operations Centres. As the ship drifted steadily towards the oil rig, drastic measures appeared imminent, and preparations were commenced for scuttling of the ship by MARCOS. Fortunately, MV OEL Vision sank while just a little over one km clear of the rig.

This close shave was the result of an accident, but such a scenario could easily take birth in the mind of a terrorist, and result in incalculable damage to Bombay High, and the nation’s economy. An even worse nightmare could involve a liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier; either being itself targeted by suicide bombers (a la USS Cole), or hijacked and sailed into a busy port city as a floating bomb. LNG has a very low flash point, and an air-LNG aerosol mixture could be made to explode with the punch of a small tactical nuclear weapon.

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The seven tons of RDX and small arms that were landed on the coast of Maharashtra in 1993, also came by sea, but an LNG holocaust, would make the Mumbai blasts look like a picnic. So who keeps track of ships plying in Indian waters, and how do we know whether they are innocent traders or disguised terrorists?

The short answer is, that the Indian Navy and Coast Guard are engaged in a continuous endeavour to monitor traffic. But with nearly 100,000 merchantmen transiting the Indian Ocean annually, warships of littoral (and extra-regional) navies sortieing out to sea with increasing frequency, and intense coastal and fishing traffic, it is a formidable challenge. However, it has now become a vital requirement of a nation’s maritime security, to have, at all times, a comprehensive picture of the traffic in coastal waters, choke points and ocean areas of interest to it. Such knowledge of traffic, activities and events at sea provides early warning of threats to maritime safety and security, and aids timely decision making.

In naval parlance, this factor has come to be known as Maritime Domain awareness or MDA, and takes into its ambit, activity in all three dimensions: surface, underwater and airspace. An effective organization for MDA encompasses the ability to keep our oceanic areas under sustained surveillance, and serves a number of distinct purposes:
In peacetime, continuous surveillance is maintained on shipping, fishing and other traffic, as well as the deployment and operations of maritime forces.

Such surveillance helps to establish traffi