India’s Effort and Need for Greater Synergy in IOR

Commander Prakash Gopal

Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), one of the first theorists to dwell in some detail upon sea power, described the oceans as ‘great highways’ or ‘wide commons’ – giving birth to the term ‘global commons.’ Today, more than ever before, the oceans are driving all economic activity around the world, and carried upon them over 11 billion tons of cargo in 2019. Over 50% of this cargo either originated from, or was destined for ports in Asia. Besides the fact the India accounts for a significant portion of this maritime traffic, its unique geography places the Indian peninsula astride the most important sea lines of communication (SLOC) that connect West Asia and Africa to South-East and East Asia. While this affords a significant strategic advantage, it also places the many threats to ‘good order at sea’, close to the Indian coastline.

Since independence in 1947, the Indian Navy (IN), and later the Indian Coast Guard (ICG), have been acutely aware of the arduous responsibility of protecting the SLOCs in Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Even the political leadership identified it as a vital prerequisite for India’s economic growth. Till about two decades ago, it was commonplace to hear Indian naval vessels calling on the marine Very High Frequency (VHF) radio band to establish the identity of merchant vessels transiting in vicinity. Generating a maritime ‘picture’ was an arduous task, involving a great deal of manual plotting, updating and estimation or dead reckoning, all with understandably abysmal accuracy. Once a vessel departed a port, it was near impossible to keep track of its whereabouts till it entered the coverage zone of shore-based radar, or until it activated its emergency locator beacons in case of distress. Naval and coast guard ships had to manually transmit the position of all interrogated vessels on rudimentary voice or Morse code-based radio circuits.

Despite exponential growth in shipping in the region in the last twenty years, there is noticeably less radio chatter at sea now, yet the maritime operations rooms are covered wall to wall, with screens showing real-time position of ships, together with related data such as destination, nature of cargo, size and nationality of crew etc. Data is now received from multiple sources, ranging from geo-stationary satellites orbiting more than 35,000 kilometres above earth, to small sensors all along the coastline that operate 24 x 7 without significant human intervention. They generate billions of bytes of data that are sifted through, analysed and fused by powerful computers, and finally presented in visual form for assimilation and action by concerned agencies. The field of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), as a facet of maritime security operations, has possibly been the biggest benefactor of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

The contemporary revolution in MDA started possibly with the evolution of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) in the 1990s. With radar technology having matured considerably, and exponential year-on-year growth in maritime traffic, there arose a pressing need for an effective, low-cost technology that could provide the identity of ships. This was achieved by the AIS. In 2002 that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) amended the international convention on Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) to stipulate that all commercial vessels of over 300 gross tonnage were to carry an AIS transponder on board. This was targeted primary as a safety measure so as to enable quick location, identification and rescue in case of emergency. The AIS system was based on the VHF band, and was therefore restricted to line-of-sight. Suddenly, it became possible to fuse radar and AIS data together, so as to obtain a comprehensive picture of maritime traffic in a specific location.

With improvement in ICT hardware capabilities, AIS transponders became smaller and cheaper. As has been the case with most consumer technologies, this caused a proliferation of AIS devices across the spectrum of maritime vessels. There was now the issue of managing all the traffic data that was available, to transform it into meaningful and actionable information. The second challenge was the highly localised scope of information available, as a result of the radio frequency in use by the device. A need was felt to have maritime traffic information of the entire area of interest, round the clock. This could only be possible with fixed infrastructure, as mobile assets such as ships and aircraft were constrained by endurance and cost of operation in fulfilling this requirement.

In India particularly, the terrorist attack of 26^th November 2008 on Mumbai, was a rude reminder of the urgent need to bring all the waters around the Indian coast under effective surveillance. Ten terrorists managed to land on the Mumbai shoreline in a hijacked fishing boat and caused mayhem in the heart of the country’s commercial capital over the ensuing 72 hours. The aftermath of these attacks saw a wave of reform in India’s coastal security apparatus, with the most notable being in the field of MDA. Suddenly the cost of not having effective MDA in India’s area of interest had become painfully evident, and it was not one that the country was willing to pay again.

At an operational level, there was a flurry of activity. A project for an extensive chain of coastal radar stations, accompanied with AIS receivers all along the Indian coastline, was executed in two phases. Joint Operation Centres (JOC) were set up at regional headquarters to coordinate security operations across multiple agencies such as the police, customs, fisheries, energy companies, the coast guard and the Indian Navy. As these projects were executed progressively, large amounts of information started flowing into the JOC and other operations rooms, and all 7500 kilometres of the Indian coastline was gradually illuminated by an array of radar, AIS and optical sensors.

The strategic need for an information collation, analysis and dissemination centre had also been recognised. Consequently the National Command Control Communication and Intelligence (NC3I) was established with its hub at the Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) at Gurgaon, about 40 kilometres away from the capital city. This has now resulted in a robust MDA framework for the IOR littoral, capable of handling large amounts of data, and providing actionable inputs to consumers of this information. The scalability and flexibility of this architecture implies that this structure would be able to easily adapt to future improvements in technology and information-sharing wherewithal that could result in significant increase in the amount of data being generated, processed and analysed.

Besides the immediate imperative of securing its littorals, the Indian Navy was also cognisant of its regional obligations to ensure good order in the larger Indian Ocean Region (IOR). As a ‘net-security provider’, maritime domain information was key to ensuring that the IOR remained a driver of regional economic growth. Towards this end, the Indian Navy drove the agenda for greater information sharing at an international level, especially in the region. It has played an active role in various regional efforts, such as the establishment of the Information Fusion Centre (IFC) at Singapore in 2009. The Indian Navy has maintained a liaison officer at the IFC since its inception, together with many other countries, thereby gaining access and contributing to the regional maritime information-sharing effort.

Recent years have witnessed a quantum leap in India’s role in regional, and global MDA efforts. In May 2015, the Indian Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approved the Navy’s proposal to establish ‘white-shipping’ information sharing agreements with 24 countries. Since then many more countries and multi-national agencies have been added to the list. Functional arrangements have been put in place with many of these countries and agencies, which has considerably augmented the quality of the regional maritime picture that is now generated at the IMAC.

In the last decade or so, the limitations in range of AIS information have largely been overcome by satellite-based AIS systems and the development of Long-Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) systems. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) put the first Indian AIS receiver on a satellite (Resourcesat-2) in 2011. In 2013 the space agency placed India’s first dedicated military communications satellite (Rukmini) in geosynchronous orbit. The Indian Navy has been the main consumer for this satellite, and it has provided the Indian Naval fleet of ships, aircraft and submarines, a dedicated and secure means of exchanging real-time data with operations rooms and amongst themselves. All these fairly rapid and significant developments have equipped the Indian maritime authorities with the necessary wherewithal to monitor maritime activities in a large area of interest.

But what has been a real turning point in recent times, is the transformation of India from being a consumer of information to becoming a provider it. This was evidenced in December 2018 when the Indian Ocean Region – Information Fusion Centre (IOR-IFC) was inaugurated by the Indian Defence Minister at IMAC. By inviting partner countries to send liaison officers at the IOR-IFC, India has reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining good order in the regional maritime commons. As the network of like-minded countries expands, it will go a long way in improving the quality of MDA both for national security and regional stability purposes, as well as in meeting future challenges to maritime security in the region.

The nature of the maritime domain is quite different from others. Land boundaries divide whilst maritime boundaries unite. Maritime domain is therefore rightly termed as ‘global commons’, security of which is importance to every nation. However, this very inclusive nature of the maritime domain means that at no stage can one rest on its achievements. Threats will continue to evolve so as to try and defeat security systems and processes. Technology that has largely underpinned the progress in the effort to build comprehensive regional MDA is available in equal measure to those who aim to disrupt legitimate human activity on the seas. It is also counter-productive to approach the issue of maritime security from singular country focused perspective. It has to be a more comprehensive process that brings all the nations in IOR together, in contributing, sharing and utilising the available information to everyone’s common good. This also means that maritime information systems will continue to expand in scope, and all participants need to be able to leverage technology, as well as evolve processes and protocols to keep ahead in this game. There is also the issue that MDA is the proverbial ‘back-end’ of maritime security operations and therefore not as politically attractive for large financial outlays. 26/11 jolted India into action and others should draw lessons rather than await their own challenges. Since MDA underpins all national and regional efforts to ensure security upon the global commons, it needs a collaborative approach. The extent to which the Nations of the IOR realise this, and can synergise their individual efforts, will determine the future of the regional maritime order and security. 

Commander Prakash Gopal [Retired] is a veteran of the Indian Navy and a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He can be reached at pgopal@uow.edu.au.