It led to internet outages in parts of the Middle East and Asia, including India, shedding light on India’s Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA).
- UDA refers to the capability of a nation or an organization to monitor, detect, and assess activities occurring beneath the surface of water bodies like oceans and seas.
Need for UDA in India
- National security and regional stability (eg China’s Underwater Great Wall project).
- Protecting Critical Infrastructure: Such as submarine communication cables (which are fibre-optic cables), which transmit over 95% of global internet traffic.
- Fibre optic cables transmit data as pulses of light through strands of glass or plastic fibres using the principle of total internal reflection.
Challenges for India
- Technological Gaps: The development of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) is at an early stage.
- DRDO’s phosphoric acid fuel cell-based Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system for submarines compares poorly to lithium-ion fuel cell-powered AIP.
- Bharat Electronics Limited’s Unmanned surface vehicle (USV), designed for bathymetric surveys, has only a 30-kilogram payload capacity.
- This results in import dependency for critical underwater equipment.
- Financial constraints: Lack of long-term support to startups hinders the prototype development
- Operational Difficulties: Due to India's vast coastline, Chinese submarine incursions, seasonal monsoons, and fragmented inter-agency coordination.
India’s initiatives
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