ACOUSTIC CAPACITY BUILDING IN THE ARABIAN SEA. POSSIBILITIES FOR PAKISTAN NAVY

The Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) was a massive Cold War infrastructure created by the US for its military necessity to track the Soviet submarine threat originating from the North and approaching the US mainland. SOSUS is a chain of underwater listening posts located around the world in places such as the Atlantic Ocean near Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom – the GIUK gap – and at various locations in the Pacific Ocean. The system was supplemented by mobile assets such as the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) and became part of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS). The US secretly recorded continuous undersea noise for many years and limited the access to its defence scientists and naval experts involved in tracking Soviet vessels.

It was started in 1949 and towards the latter part of the Cold War, American biologist and environmentalist Roger Searle Payne got access to the SOSUS recordings and discovered the Humpback Whale songs. Payne’s findings were indeed revolutionary and were facilitated due to the high quality recordings made possible by the US Navy infrastructure. Subsequently, post the collapse of the Soviet Union, the entire SOSUS project was declassified in 1991 and the data and many such databases recorded during the Cold War period were made available to researchers throughout US universities to undertake diverse studies and develop a far better understanding of the underwater domain. Some of the Cold War infrastructure is now being accessed by academicians to plan and undertake oceanographic studies.

Way Ahead

Acoustic capability can be segregated into three parts as famously referred in the maritime domain awareness context – “to See, Understand and Share”.When we look at the acoustic capability building in the Arabian Sea, we have to look at all the three parts. The immediate physical layer is the ‘See’ category, where we include the sensors, the deployment aspects in the undersea domain and the associated hardware required such as power supply and front-end electronics. Though such hardware including the sensor, power supply, deployment mechanism and enclosures and front-end electronics are not produced in this region, they have advanced significantly in the West, available to be shipped, though at high cost. We definitely need to focus on indigenous capability to produce these hardwares in Pakistan, however, they may require high engineering and material science capabilities. It is hoped, that as the economic growth potential increases, the demand will increase and the economic viability will compel indigenous development.

The second category is the “Understand” or the analysis capability. This is very critical and involves the study and understanding of the site specific medium characteristics and the local marine ecosystem.Import of technology does not work in this category. There have been enough efforts to import hardware but the analysis limitation undermines the success of any such projects, resulting in poor growth of the underwater maritime sector in the Arabian Sea. The complete source-path-receiver analysis for all possible applications needs to be undertaken with state-of-the-art infrastructure and analysis facilities for trying out innovative ideas of technology, products and applications prior to their commercialisation.

The third category of “Share” includes networking hardware, protocols and algorithms to transmit data/information from the node to the top of the network and across networks with proper security and accessibility hierarchy being adhered to. In this category as well, the initial import of technologies and ideas can be resorted to at the start and indigenous capability can be built over time. Underwater networks do have very unique network requirements and capabilities compared to the terrestrial networks and enough efforts are required to ensure reasonable performance. The analysis efforts in the “Understand” category will also feed useful information to enhance the networking capabilities.

Pakistan Navy can setup an Sound Surveillance System in the arabian sea starting from its rann of kutch sea rea to the Gwadar naval base to monitor indian navy activities. This is important especially to detect the movement of indian navy submarines as it is heavily investing in its modernisation. It is in process to built new 6 nuclear powered submarines in the near future.For this building an acoustic capacity in the arabian sea will be helpful to keep an eye on the indian naval activities especially the submarine force.

Major sea lines on the Arabian Sea including Pakistan and western indian coast.