Underwater Domain Awareness
The 21st century global order has witnessed a significant shift towards the maritime domain, geopolitically and geo-strategically.
What is Underwater Domain Awareness(UDA) ?
UDA is an aspect of Maritime domain awareness in various fields ranging from maritime security, blue economy, marine environment, disaster management and science & technology and involves collection and analysis of vast datasets to provide information about sea-mounds, ridges, navigation, communication, temperature etc.
Importance of UDA :
- Expanding Blue Economy: Offers opportunity to earn revenue from fisheries, tourism, shipping etc.
- Identifying Fish rich areas: Recognising regions through space-based sensors and technologies like GAGAN(GPS-aided GEO augmented navigation).
- Detecting Potential Threats: Tracking maritime threats such as submarines, unmanned underwater vehicles in the maritime borders.
- Tackle Unforeseen Events: Augmenting preparedness to deal with unprecedented contingency like Tsunami.
- Research & Innovation: Exploration of Deep sea minerals, polymetallic nodules, and rare earth minerals.
- Strategic Importance: Maritime is the driving force in the international sphere of influence. For example, the Indo-Pacific region has gained a lot of importance in terms of newly formed minilateralism like AUKUS and QUAD.
Challenges :
- Indigenous development : India lags behind in underwater sensor technology and relies on importing.
- Deep sea connectivity like optical fibre connectivity between port blair and Chennai is vulnerable to terrorism and cyber attack like the Nord stream incident in Baltic sea.
- Increase in the blue economy may also increase instances of Anti- Piracy.
India needs to build its capacity to take a lead role because of its strategic location and centre of gravity is shifting towards Indo Pacific but for that India needs acoustic and robust Infrastructure along with up to date technology to counter threats emerging and to achieve SAGAR vision of safety, security and sustainable growth in the region.