Australian media might have uploaded sensitive documents regarding Scorpene submarines

'The Australian', Australia’s biggest-selling national newspaper has uploaded some new documents that give out information regarding the operating instructions of the underwater warfare system of the six Scorpene submarines that were being built by French firm DCNS for the Indian Navy.

A top defence analyst says that the documents can be a threat to the security of the combat vessels, since these documents, having the Indian Navy insignia on it and marked "Restricted Scorpene India," give details of the sonar system, used to gather intelligence underwater.

These documents also reveal a wide range of technical specifications of these sonars, also detailing their functionalities.

Even though the Navy has is yet to officially react to these documents, some sources say that they pose no harm to national security, adding that the released information also exists on "many naval defence websites".

When contacted, the paper said that it was told that the secret data was removed from DCNS, which is owned by Thales (35%) and the French government (65%) by a employee who worked a sub-contractor in 2011. He then took it to a private company in Southeast Asia, from where it was passed on to a branch in another Southeast Asian nation. It was then that a disk containing the data was posted to an Australian company via regular mail.

India's defence ministry said that as per him, there was no eminent security risk, while the French government said that the information in the documents only showed how the submarines operate, which does not compromise with 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.

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