More Scorpene papers surface; sacked sub-contractor blamed

The Australian newspaper on Thursday uploaded a fresh bunch of leaked documents relating to information about the operating instructions of the underwater warfare system of the six Scorpene submarines being built in Mumbai by French firm DCNS for the Indian Navy.

A top defence analyst allayed fears that the exposure could compromise the security of the combat vessels. Like in the previous case, the newspaper blacked out details which it felt would compromise India's security interests.

However, the new set of documents, with the Indian Navy insignia on them and marked "Restricted Scorpene India", gave details of the sonar system, which is used to gather information underwater. They revealed a wide range of technical specifications of the sonars and at what degree and frequency they would function.

 The documents detailed the "Operating Instruction Manual", which talked of how to select a target for weapon firing and weapon configuration selection, among others.

Though the Navy has not yet officially reacted to the release of the new documents, sources maintained that they did not compromise national security. They said the same information was on "many naval defence websites".

The paper said it has been told that the secret data was removed from DCNS – 35-per cent owned by Thales and 65 per cent by the French government - by a former sub-contractor in 2011 and taken to a private company in Southeast Asia before being passed on to a branch of that company in a second Southeast Asian nation.

A disk containing the data was then posted in regular mail to a company in Australia. At this stage it is not thought that the leak came from India.

The sub-contractor was fired while providing training in India, the paper's source said.

 India's defence ministry said that it saw no immediate security risk and the French government said the information in the documents only showed how the submarines operate and did not compromise their security.

"The Indians can object to the fact that these documents show the Pakistanis how to maintain their submarines and that's annoying, but it doesn't tell the Pakistanis how to detect an Indian ship, or how we build a submarine in France. Not at all," the source said.