Indian Council of World Affairs

Keshav Verma: Good afternoon, Excellence, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the Indian Council of World Affairs for this panel discussion on the theme, Maritime Domain Awareness in the Indo-Pacific Region. May I request you to keep your phones on silent mode? Thank you. We will start this afternoon's program with Ms. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar, Additional Secretary, ICWA, delivering her welcome remarks. The panel discussion will be chaired by Captain Sarabjeet Singh Parmar, Distinguished Fellow, Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi. The panelists include Cdr. Dr. Arnab Das, Founder and Director, Maritime Research Centre, Pune, Mr. Abhijit Singh, Former Naval Officer and Former Head, Maritime Policy Initiative at Observer Research Foundation, and Captain Gurpreet Singh Khurana, Professor, Naval War College, Goa. 

All our panelists today are contributors to the recent ICWA Special Publication on Maritime Domain Awareness in the Indo-Pacific region on which our discussion today will be based. This publication can be downloaded from ICWA's website. The discussion will be followed by a brief Q&A session, moderated by the Chair. 

May I now request Ms. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar, Additional Secretary, ICWA, to kindly give her welcome remarks. 

Nutan Kapoor Mahawar: Distinguished experts, members of the Diplomatic Corps, students and friends, before I speak on the theme of today's discussion, I would like to say that, and you have all been watching the news since a few days, especially since last night, friends, we are at war with Pakistan. From the platform of Sapru House, I wish to express our full confidence in the ability and valour of our armed and paramilitary forces to achieve the goals that they have set for themselves in these operations. This is the time for perfect coordination between man and machine, and we pray that our soldiers' weapons never fail them. 

I also wish to congratulate our media personnel for righteous reporting and want to wish them strength. And I wish to say that our Civic Administration needs our full support. Friends, we have to see this through, together, for the sake of a terror-free, peaceful and stable world to which India is deeply committed. I want to thank you for coming to participate in this important panel discussion on Maritime Domain Awareness, MDA for short, in the Indo-Pacific, a topic which has both defense and non-defense components. Above all, MDA is about cooperation in the conventional and non-traditional areas of security in order to ensure peaceful, stable and crime-free waters, a topic which is extremely important for our turbulent world. MDA is also about technology at the service of human security. 

Today's panel discussion is based on ICWA's recently published special publication on Maritime Domain Awareness in the Indo-Pacific, which, as Keshav just mentioned, is available on our website for downloading. The publication represents a collective effort to critically assess the evolving concept of MDA in the Indo-Pacific region, one of the most dynamic and contested regions of the world. The discussion hopes to build directly upon the research, insights and recommendations given in that publication, with the aim of taking this conversation forward in both policy and practice. 

The Indo-Pacific region, spanning from the eastern shores of Africa to the western Pacific Ocean, has emerged as the epicenter of global geopolitical and economic activity. Its strategic importance is underpinned by vast maritime spaces, complex and often contested maritime boundaries, and some of the busiest and most crucial sea lanes of communication in the world. And we will hear about this more from our panelists in the discussion. 

This makes the Indo-Pacific not only a conduit for global trade, but also a zone of immense strategic contestation and vulnerability. MDA is not just a conceptual framework, it is the cornerstone of effective maritime governance. At its core, MDA is the ability to detect, identify, track and understand maritime activity in real time. It is about transforming data into actionable intelligence. It allows nations to safeguard their maritime interests, enforce law and order, and respond effectively to threats, whether conventional or non-traditional. But MDA is not merely about threats, it is also about opportunity. It empowers coastal nations to manage resources sustainably, monitor environmental changes, and support economic development in sectors such as fisheries, offshore energy, and maritime transport. It is a vital enabler of the blue economy, which holds the key to inclusive growth and ecological balance in this region. 

The need to focus on MDA in the Indo-Pacific is more urgent than ever. The Indo-Pacific region is not only marked by increasing traditional and non-traditional security concerns. One of the primary challenges in the Indo-Pacific is the disparate capacity levels among regional players. While some nations possess advanced surveillance infrastructure, robust navies, and sophisticated maritime data processing capabilities, others struggle with resource limitations, outdated technology, inadequate or only coastal surveillance capability, and inadequate institutional frameworks. 

Addressing these disparities is fundamental to developing an inclusive and effective MDA architecture. Nations need to move beyond mere information collection and towards enhanced data sharing, analysis, and interoperability, and firm cooperative frameworks. Emerging technologies offer powerful tools to strengthen MDA. Innovations such as automatic identification systems, synthetic aperture radar, and UUVs are revolutionizing maritime surveillance. Moreover, artificial intelligence and big data analytics enable the processing of vast streams of data to detect anomalies, predict potential threats, and facilitate preparedness and preemption. 

Integration of these technologies into national and regional MDA systems can exponentially increase situational awareness, responsiveness, and decision-making capabilities. A critical enabler in this technological evolution is the space sector. The publication has a separate chapter on this. Satellite-based monitoring, including the use of optical and radar satellites, plays an increasingly pivotal role in MDA. These assets can monitor large swaths of oceanic territory, especially in remote and otherwise inaccessible areas. Satellite constellations can track vessel movements, detect illegal fishing activities, and support search and rescue operations. Regional cooperation in space-based capabilities through initiatives like joint satellite missions, data sharing agreements, and regional satellite monitoring centers can significantly bolster collective MDA capacities. 

Friends, defense is integral to MDA as it ensures the protection of national interests and maritime security. A robust defense framework enhances MDA by enabling timely detection and response to threats. To achieve this, naval forces deploy advanced platforms such as UAVs, long-range maritime patrol aircraft like the Boeing P8I, and stealth frigates equipped with multifunction radar systems. These technologies provide persistent surveillance, real-time intelligence, and enhanced threat detection across vast maritime zones, significantly bolstering the overall effectiveness of MDA. 

India, as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean and a key player in the Indo-Pacific, has a vital role to play. Its initiatives such as Sagar, now elevated to Mahasagar, IPOI, and partnerships under Quad and IORA reflect a commitment to maritime security. The Indian Navy's Information Fusion Center has emerged as a hub for collaborative maritime information sharing. Continued investment in maritime domain surveillance infrastructure, including satellite systems like RESAT and Oceansat, and cooperation with like-minded countries will be crucial. 

Maritime domain, as a part of the global commons, is often subject to neglect or overuse because it does not belong to any single nation. This shared common can lead to a lack of accountability where countries and individuals may feel less compelled to act responsibly. However, this very status demands greater collective responsibility. Nations must recognize that global commons require shared stewardship. Developed countries equipped with more capability, resources, and technological capacity should take the lead in forming robust, inclusive frameworks for the sustainable governance of oceans and carry others along. 

By actively engaging in looking after these commons, nations are not just sharing legitimate benefits, but also committing to their nurturing and preservation with a sense of trusteeship and respect for the common heritage of mankind, an essential step towards ensuring long-term peace, stability, prosperity, and harmony with the environment. I look forward to a thought-provoking discussion. I wish the panelists all the best. Thank you for your patience. 

Keshav Verma: Thank you, ma'am. May I now request captain Parmar to give his remarks and conduct the procedings. 

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: Thank you, Keshav and thank you ICWA for this opportunity and I will echo Additional Secretary Mahawar's words. I think today we are actually at war without being at war. It's not a very happy situation but we need to tide over it. And I think there are some lessons on air domain awareness that we can take away from the last few days which can be dovetailed into whatever we look at, at an overall MDA. But of course, our thoughts and our minds are out with the people who are under attack and of course our men and women in uniform who are at the front of all action.

Just taking off from the remarks of what Additional Secretary Mahawar said, the first question is that when you look at MDA, do we fully understand what it is? It's very easy to give definitions but the whole impact of acceptance of what does it mean, what does it entail and especially when you are looking at in a region as diverse as the Indian Ocean region today, it needs to be actually accepted as a common norm and I think we have reached a certain degree of success insofar as the surface element goes. I will be very clear about this.

So what all does say maritime domain awareness cover and let's break it down into three broad segments for a better understanding. One is the surface element where we have what we call the international shipping lanes and the sea lines of communication that flow, the common goods flow, there is trade, there is movement of passengers, there is the economies of all nations even if they are landlocked flow across the oceans and that's a given, right and I give you the example of Malawi which is landlocked but has a better understanding of the blue economy than any other nation because its survival and its economics and import and export are by the ocean and I have had the opportunity of interacting with Malawi diplomats and believe you me, they have a better understanding of maritime law especially UNCLOS than most coastal nations. This is an example I always give.

But let's look at the three main segments and I have already covered the surface part. The most complicated part which is now emerging is the underwater domain. I know there are my peers and seniors who have written about the underwater domain here and of course we have a full think tank that looks at it. But we need to understand that if we are going to look at the underwater domain, how are you going to link it with the surface? The environment is different. Do you need to look at it as a separate subject? How will you link it and therefore would it be better given the science that is involved, given the nature of the environment and given that we have hardly even touched?

Let's say, if we are looking at submarine warfare up to six kilometers, there are many kilometers below that level of six under which your seabed lines of communication flow and this includes all your submarine cables, it includes your gas and oil pipelines wherever they are laid. And if we look at the damage which is caused to seabed cables, which has almost become a regular issue and then of course we have China who has said that they have a drilling tool for seabed mining and seabed mining is another part of the UDA which is yet to be fully understood and discovered. And that same instrument can also damage submarine cables, then we are looking at a new method of perhaps warfare and therefore we need more awareness as to how is it going to happen, how do you tackle it, there is sovereignty involved, submarine cables, nations don't get into it, it is more or less private industry, it's a complicated equation.

And if you look at the prospects of repair which India has gone, we have a very long lead time for repair of a cable for a number of reasons. So there is a debate existing that do we need to have an international convention or understanding on seabed cables. And then of course there is seabed mining, which I have mentioned but that gives cause, legitimate cause for nations to be present in areas beyond their adjacent maritime domains and we are already seeing that happening. And of course there is the survey ships of other nations which are entering the Indian Ocean region and that is something we need to look out. 

I was in Fiji three months back and we had a Chinese research vessel, what they call, docked there. We have Maldives who has undertaken an MOU with China permitting the Chinese to enter their waters and carry out surveys, all legitimate, all as per UNCLOS. So this is opening new and the regional cooperation aspect gets a little muddled up when you look at this and I will come to that at my second point but I will just leave it at that because the panelists would take it on properly from there. 

And then you have air domain. Now air domain is more or less a more regulated feature because it goes back many years, air travel. You have the Chicago Convention which more or less directs it, But again domain awareness. and now that you have UAS, UAVs, UCAVs, drones, this domain is also getting cluttered up. And if we look back at the last 48 hours of briefings or whatever you have read, you will realize that there is a more bigger emphasis on drones and UAVs or the unmanned aerial system. Now this can be from this size perhaps to the size of a big aircraft. 

So lesson taken away from the last 48 hours is that we do need a complex and an overlapping system that can actually map your air domain. So the next question here is that then do we need to look at air domain awareness as a special subject? It's going to take time, it's not that easy and I'll just leave these questions and doubts with you and go back to the next aspect of regional cooperation. If trust is the main factor, then is our neighborhood, what is the status of trust in our neighborhood? I personally feel we're in a bit of a disarray, we need to get things going, not what is happening with Pakistan but generally speaking also and there are certain nations who are willing to cooperate and work with us but yet also engage in strategic autonomy. 

So if we do strategic autonomy, we have to give that level to the other nation that you can do it, but then, of course, it needs to be perhaps tempered a little bit. So the MDA in a way is a sort of a common factor and we're essentially looking at non-traditional threats in combating them whether it's maritime crime, drugs, smuggling, call it what you like in a way. So that is the factor out there, but when you look at regional cooperation, you have to understand the smaller nations, and I said this a number of times, tend to get overwhelmed by larger nations. 

So if India is going to be in the driver's seat and you're going to look at regional cooperation and you're going to look at MDA in this region, then you need to understand what is the strategic outlook of the other nation and play the game accordingly. Second part is if we need to work together, then you need to give certain elements, which enable the return of interest for other nations. So the IFC-IOR which has been set up is a perfect example or a growing example of how regional cooperation works and I'll give you two examples on this. 

When the Houthis started firing missiles and piracy started emerging again, if you would go back around that point in time, there was a Sri Lankan fishing dhow that was attacked by pirates and pirates came on board. Between Seychelles, India and Sri Lanka, sharing of information, close coordination, launching of unmanned aerial vehicles by India, and then, of course, finally, the Seychelles Maritime Agency went and did the grunt work on ground and the dhow was freed. I think that's one perfect example of how regional cooperation and sharing of information under the banner of MDA actually brings about stability, safety and security. 

Second example I'll give you that, this is a bit old, I don't remember the full story but I'll just tell it very simply. There was a ship that had caused pollution. IFC-IOR was requested that can you help us, so backtracking and by doing some detective work, which would make Sherlock Holmes very proud, I think we cut down to three, four ships and finally again by looking at the track time and the space which was information given to us, the ship was identified and the company was taken to court. So that helps against pollution also. These are two examples I thought I will give you on the regional conference part of it. 

So when we look at MDA, what we are looking at mainly is white shipping is an agreement, not a problem. What we need to do is to progress on to black shipping, help on IUU fishing, which is one of the aims of IPMDA and if we do that in the IOR then of course the bigger one big cog wheel of IPMDA is sort of in place. So these are certain elements that we need to look at and I think the panelists are going to cover that. 

Last point is technology and cost. Would smaller nations have the cost to, one is, buy the technology, second is to absorb it into their systems which means that HR and training comes into play. Do they have the right people, do they have the right space, do they have the right sort of acumen to do it is one, and then, of course, the last is I can just give you an example is that we have enough programs whether it is the IPOI where you develop capacities and capabilities or through IORA, so the maritime safety and security arrangements or whatever even trilaterals if you want to do it. We need to get these nations and plug them into the overall MDA. 

So if we look at the regional centres, let's say one in Gurugram, Madagascar, you've got one in Seychelles and then you plug them in regionally. You develop these smaller centres in various nations who are willing to absorb the technology, willing to be part of the bigger system and therefore you have a grid network, hub and spoke or a grid network in which you have a flow of information and then of course it is up to the nation to decide what sort of information they want to share but that's a start point. 

I thought I'll bring out these points out in the open and we have a stellar panel. I think a gentleman ten minutes each so we have time for questions and answers and I know Abhijit will be more or less looking on the tech part. So we'll go away with B.Tech degrees I think and of course Arnab, you can handle the UDA, I know that's your pet thing and Gurpreet, I think the geopolitics arrangement you can expand on more and I'll leave the field to you. 

So Abhijit, can we start with you? Thank you. 

Abhijit Singh: Thank you, sir. At the outset I'd like to thank ICWA and particularly Keshav for inviting me to this panel discussion and also to give me the opportunity to contribute to this really excellent compendium of articles. I urge you to read some of them. They're very well thought through and very well presented. 

I'm going to present some comments on what I think is happening with MDA not as a sort of definitive assessment but just as reflections of what I've seen just in the recent few years and I'm hoping to sort of give some more light to what works and what does not work with MDA. I mean, my essence is going to be in that even in my paper the way I've written it is to highlight that a lot of what we talk about MDA is aspirational there's some hurdles and some impediments that we must be aware of and that we must look to rectify if we want to make more progress in the domain of MDA. 

So let me begin with an anecdote, and I say this because anecdotes will help de-technicalize the discussion on MDA. So back in the 1990s I was a young officer posted on a frigate and I was working towards my watchkeeping certificate. I'd had a particularly tough watch on the bridge because it was a foggy afternoon and there was too many fishing boats in the area and I came off feeling rather exhausted. 

So I met the executive officer who had been on the bridge for a for some time. The executive officers usually are not on the bridge but on this particular occasion, he was on the bridge and he called me and he said that you look very stressed, and I said, sir, this has been a particularly tough watch for me, I've been just watching these little boats that have been coming close to the ship and he said that, look, you've got to outsource vigilance, you've got to have good lookouts, you've got to have people that will make the lookouts do the job that they are meant to do. So you've got to trust your systems and you've got to share the burden of domain awareness or call it the burden of watching out. 

Now this term outsource vigilance it stayed with me for some time and recently I was reading an article from the paper that had been published in the Naval War College and it spoke about the same thing the outsourcing of vigilance effectively is essentially MDA that essentially means that it's not about just looking out and having a broader swath to see and to form a comprehensive picture, that is, of course, important. What is important that you need to do it with the least amount of resources, you need to do it with the least amount of energy and the least amount of capital. If you can't do it in a cost-effective manner that whole MDA business actually doesn't make much sense. 

Now are we able to do that, now this, of course, comes at a cost because the person that evolves the technology and that shares the technology with you has a greater stake in the system and has a greater return that comes from the system. So the protocols for sharing technology are usually, or sharing data, sharing information, are usually decided by the side that comes up with the technology. And that is a thing that we've got to keep in mind. In my paper, I've discussed five trends that we need to be cognizant of. It's important to understand that until about a decade or so ago, most of the MDA used to happen using legacy systems. Legacy systems meaning you have ship-borne radars, you have radars on the shore, and then you have AIS. 

Now what happened was that the criminals got savvy. And when the criminals got savvy, they looked for ways in which they could somehow circumvent these systems. So you could go silent on AIS, you could switch off all your transmitters. So this was dark shipping. What do you do about dark shipping? So the answer to that was space-based surveillance. You needed optical satellites, you needed synthetic aperture radars that can actually look at any metallic structure out at sea. You could look through bad weather, you could look through drought cover, and you could basically see ships that didn't want them to be seen, or the crew of the ships didn't want to be detected. You could even look at them. 

The problem was that some of this was effective, but some of this was not effective because a lot of the information that these satellites gather is very dependent on analysis interpretation. So different analysts can look at that same data and interpret it differently. You needed something more definitive. That is where RF satellites came in. That is RF is radio frequency satellites. And year back I was talking with an analyst in a U.S. think tank and he pointed out that any country that is neglecting RF detection is actually doing itself a great disservice. 

In RF detection what's important is that even if there's a dark ship and it makes the slightest of a transmission, you can actually triangulate that transmission using your satellites. They have 30 microsatellites floating up and I'm talking about the Hawkeye 360 that India is now going to get from the U.S. which is also used by the U.S. Navy. So you can triangulate and you can find any contact out at sea. And that's what makes it a critical enabler of MDA. This is something that we are working towards. So RF satellites. 

The third thing that I point out is, this is important, is AI and predictive analysis. Now you look at a contact, you find that contact, you don't know what it's doing out at sea. I mean, you know that there is a boat out there, but is it involved in any illegal activity? For that you need to observe patterns. So what AI does is that it gives you the pattern of behavior, pattern of life behaviors, and that basically determines whether that boat is involved in any illegal activity. So that again makes it a critical enabler, as I said, of MDA. 

The third development that I point to is the fact that there are so many commercial services now available. And this is the other point that I wanted to make is that we should not confuse MDA with just being a maritime security endeavor. It goes beyond that. This is about resource management. It is about monitoring what's happening to the environment, environment protection, and it is essentially a business proposition today. So a lot of these companies in the market, be it Planet Labs, Spire, Maxar, some of them Planet Labs, India is also dealing with them. 

To that extent, I would say that even SeaVision, these new platforms that are coming in are essentially business propositions. There's a lot of money to be made in MDA. And if you have the ability to develop that technology, then a lot of these companies can benefit in a big way. But this is, again, a trend that we have to be mindful of. 

The next trend that I'm going to talk about is these aggregator platforms. Now, SeaVision that I spoke about, that a lot of you perhaps would have heard because it was in the news recently, India is going to get a version of SeaVision from the U.S. SeaVision, and there's a couple of others used by the EU, Mercury, IORIS. What they do is that they're aggregator platforms, means you can get a feed from AIS, you can get a feed from these Earth observation satellites, from infrared sensors, etc. And you can integrate all of these feeds and you can have a clear idea of what's happening out at sea. 

But again, as I said, this is also a business proposition because a lot of these platforms, particularly Skylight, which is like a version of SeaVision, this has private companies like Maxar, like Planet Labs, all feeding information into it. So the idea is to first sell this to countries like India and some other developing countries, and then later on get them to also subscribe to those feeds from these private companies. 

So as I said, that the idea of MDA as a safety enabler cannot be conflated with the fact that it is also a business proposition. And these two things need to be appreciated differently. Finally, in the final section, I just talk about the fact that there are serious impediments in the way MDA is going to be accepted by a lot of other countries. We have to understand that there is a reason why MDA has been fairly successful in the Pacific and not so much in the Indian Ocean space. And that's because in the Indian Ocean space, there have been concerns surrounding data sovereignty. 

Do you want your data to be collected by foreign systems? Do you want this data to be stored in servers and in ground stations abroad? How does that impinge on your autonomy, on your sovereignty? Things that Captain Parmar actually touched on. I am optimistic, and I think some of us in that study, maritime security, are reflexively optimistic about this thing. But unfortunately, the fact is that the protocols that determine interoperability in MDA are being determined by those countries that are coming up with the technology and sharing the technology with you. I talk not of data sharing, which is value neutral. I talk of systems sharing, which is not value neutral. 

So when you share technology and you share systems, definitely the countries that have developed the technology, they embed their preferences into that data sharing. And that's where I'm going to stop because I want to draw a balance between the optimism and the little amount of skepticism or pessimism that I have about MDA. Thank you. 

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: Thank you, Abhijit. If I remember correctly, having read what Hawkeye 360 has to offer, one of the things that stood out was that the ability to track ships who have switched off their AIS. If that is indeed available to us, then it makes the MDA picture a bit more clearer. Arnab, you're on. 

Arnab Das: Thank you, sir. Thank you, ICWA. Nutan, ma'am, thank you so much for this invite. And Keshav, thank you for all the coordination. A lot of running around, I know. And thank you, Chair. I think I'll take off from what Chair Parmar, sir, and my friend Abhijit mentioned. So can we have the presentation? Yeah. So I'll talk about the underwater domain awareness. First and foremost, 75% of earth is water. 70% is marine and 5% is freshwater. But you hear very little about the underwater. So that's my takeoff point. And in this 75%, I would also like to say 90% or 90 plus percent is below the surface, whether it is opportunities, resources, concerns. So we need to keep that in mind. So I talk about safe, secure, sustainable growth. 

Now, take a step further. The second biggest concern is the tropical characteristics. I mean, this special edition which we are talking about has Indo-Pacific written in it. How do you understand Indo-Pacific? Indo-Pacific is the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. How many times do you discuss tropical characteristics in your MDA discussion or even talk about the underwater? 

The biggest challenge is 60% suboptimal performance of the sonar which is being used. I mean, Abhijit mentioned this very clearly. We are getting technology from outside. They have been designed in the Cold War era for the temperate waters, Greenland-Iceland UK gap. The same sonar when it is operated or deployed in the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific will suffer 60% degradation. So if you follow the same deployment pattern which I think conventional wisdom is using, then what are we getting at the end of it? It is something we need to be very clear. 

The second important part is, keep taking it beyond the security discussion is, the blue economy. Tropical waters, the characteristic is also marked by rich biodiversity and huge amount of undersea resources. Now the countries in this region, we can call it Global South or whatever, are getting manipulated because they don't own the technology. Ma'am, you mentioned this in the beginning. So now let's take this forward that how do we address this. So just to kind of show you what the Indo-Pacific looks like, it is a tropical, I mean, there is one definition of Indo-Pacific is from Hollywood to Bollywood also, but for our discussion the tropical characteristics has to be at the core of our priority list. 

Now any strategic perspective should not lose people, economy, nature. The Global South, the democracies cannot prioritize security beyond a limit. How much ever we talk about, the budget allocation will not happen. So how do we build a framework where people, economy and nature is addressed on the same comprehensive level? Because of lack of time, I mean, I think the slides are there for you. 

Now let's come to MDA. Now the term Maritime Domain Awareness came from the Technical Committee of IMO, which has a larger definition if you look at the dimension. But the way we have conventionally driven MDA, it has largely remained an event driven, 9-11 and 26-11. Beyond that it remained a security driven. And although all four of us are naval officers sitting here, but my problem with security driven formulation is that it demands exclusivity, which becomes a difficulty when we talk about democracies. Can the security budget do the heavy lifting for capacity building is a question we need to all look at. 

So what has happened is the conventional MDA has only remained on the surface. I will not elaborate beyond that. So these are the four stakeholders that we talk about. Let's go one by one. Even river security, I mean, trans-boundary rivers and a whole lot of issues, I mean, inland water transport. Again the understanding of what remains below the water is something we really have not looked at. Kasab came by a surface boat, what if the next lot comes using underwater drones? And again, this Rohingya crisis, the boat people, large scale migration, how do we address these issues? These are going to be very complicated. So unless we look at, I mean, drugs are being ferried using submersibles. 

Blue economy, Indian Ocean region is looked at as a hub for energy security. The next slide that you see is we are increasingly looking at the oceans or the waters for food security. But contrary to that, bycatch is of the order of 80%. There's a Colorado University report which says that fish stock globally is on the decline since 1996. If that be the case, how come bycatch, bycatch is in a mechanized trawl, you pick up 100 tons, only 20 tons is usable and rest 80% is thrown back. How do you reconcile this? How do you manage this? This is UDA, right? Then we have offshore assets, deep sea mining, six times more resources, the rare earth metals for EV is in the oceans. 

India included, lot of developed countries have invested significantly in exploration but international seaboard authority is finding it hard to give licenses for exploitation. How will you regulate it? A lot of people who are not part of the initial journey said that we have done enough on the land so leave the oceans alone. It's a very loaded statement, but see, development or environmental concerns cannot be a roadblock for development. But how do you navigate this in an advanced manner is something we need to look at.

Blue economy, now when we talk about inland water transport or any port management or coastal management, the conventional thinking is that dredging is the de facto solution, which is an absolutely flawed argument. There are ports I have seen which have become unmanageable or unviable economically because the dredging budget has become, or there are a lot of people in Bombay, the richest people in Bombay are the people involved in dredging. So there is a lot to understand there.

Now environmental degradation, speed of sound in air is 345 meters per second, speed of sound underwater is 1,500 meters per second, five times more. What does it mean? Marine mammals underwater use sound for biologically critical functions, finding food, communication, finding mates and a whole lot of navigation, everything. Now all the anthropologic activities is causing what is called acoustic habitat degradation. Large scale strandings are being seen now. Even in the west coast of India you see massive stranding of, I mean, the Maharashtra coast alone in 2018 had 80 big wheels standing, 720 kilometers of coastline. Huge concerns. But are we looking at it?

Or when we say environmental impact assessment, does this even figure? How much we know do it and rest of it we'll see. So we need to look at it very differently. And disaster management, of course, again, just to show you some pictures and how it can pan out. Science and technology, how do you manage this? A lot of science and technology has to go into it. And the most appropriate terminology is digital transformation. How will you achieve digital transformation?

So, we don't know much about the ecosystem that exists. What are the components of ecosystem? How do they interact with each other, what are the species? If we have better knowledge, we can definitely. The second important thing is the Indian EEZ alone, 3.7 million square kilometers. Conventional wisdom on digital transformation will say, we'll deploy sensors. 3.7 million square kilometers, how many sensors can you put? So what is the alternative? Let's see.

Now, this is the UDA framework we take pride in, MRC, and we have come out, we have got a copyright also on this. When you look at the four sides of the cube, represent the four stakeholders that we talked about. Strategic security, blue economy, climate change, sustainability, and digital transformation. But the core is the acoustic capacity and capability building. Today, what we see is massive fragmentation. Security will not share data, not share information, or others will not. So unless we come together, we will be fragmented. All of us need to pull in resources, synergize our effort. That's the horizontal construct.

The vertical construct is massive amount of sensing, analysis, and regulation. Today, it's a top-down approach. When we get technology, we also get the know-how, we also get the deployment strategy. And it doesn't work. If 60% degradation of performance, then how will the deployment strategy work for us? So it has to be a bottom-up approach. Each of the smaller cube, we also say, we talk about the demographic dividend or whatever, whichever way you look at it, massive data collection. So it has to be a bottom-up approach, and each of the smaller cube that you see here can represent those smaller projects that we need to look at.

Now many of our young students, I see a lot of young students, they are labeled unemployable. It's not that they don't work hard, they are not doing a good job, but they are not able to relate their work to a real-world problem-solving aspect. And they don't know whom are they relevant to. This gives you an answer to that. Today with, I mean, now if the new framework is accepted, we will have more sea area than the terrestrial India that we have, 350 nautical miles. The contribution of the maritime India to the GDP is less than 4%. How will it go up? I mean, inland water transport came, it must have been conceived 30 years back, but even today, or acoustics as a subject is not being taught in even a single academic institution in this country. So there's a lot of work to be done, but there is huge opportunity if we look at it very, very carefully.

I think I'll move forward. Now this is digital transformation, marine spatial planning is a term that you use. How do we get this map? AIS data, Abhijit talked about it. Using AIS data, using data analytics, we generated the underwater map, low frequency underwater noise because of shipping. And what is it meant for? You can do even submarine deployment using this. You know how the SNR is looking. But the second part is more interesting is marine mammal stranding, it answers the question that I put. Why so much of marine mammal stranding in our western coast?

And this is a real time spatio-temporal map. Every five minutes this map can be upgraded. So you have information to that granularity. And you can imagine how good a policy tool this can be. And a similar map can be done for fish stock mapping, for whatever you want to do. For sedimentation, I mean, tropical waters, the sediment transport pattern is extremely complex. So this can give you an answer to how do we look at it, even your master plans can be looked at it. I will leave it at this. But this map can be made with very little deployment. You deploy only for validation.

Now what is acoustic capacity building? To see, to understand and to share, it answers some of the points which Abhijit also talked about. To see is the sensor and the platform that will carry the sensor. This is somewhere, where we can kind of get to accelerate our thing, we should try and do indigenization, but to some extent we can rely on input from outside. But the second part to understand has to be done indigenously. It looks at the confidentiality of the data also. This is somewhere we cannot be outsourced.

The third, and also because our tropical waters are different, all that has to be done indigenously. And I want to give you a strategic perspective. I mean, 60% degradation, a sonar which gives you 32 nautical miles in the Russian waters gives you six nautical miles here. If that six can become 12, and we can deny this to our adversary, we get a four-time strategic advantage. The third point is to share. Now when you say share, it means different things to different people. Now a policymaker requires very specific input, but he has the luxury of having a big screen. But a fisherman on the ground requires very specific input for the particular species that he is interested in. But he doesn't have the luxury to even carry a laptop. Can we not give him a mobile app where he gets very specific input? And who else other than India can do this?

We have a massive talent pool, but we need to define the problem well. And now, today, when we do this import from outside, to see, to understand, and to share comes in one package. Yes, last two slides. The second aspect is digital transformation. Now, from the human resource perspective, high-end data analysts who will do the number crunching, who will do the complete data analytics, both hardware and software. Second is domain knowledge. Once the data comes in, we need multi-disciplinary, right from international relation to political science to, you can name it, who will make sense of that data, interpret it for a policy framework.

And the third is the field deployment specialist. Now, we have to send people to the waterfront. Why can't it be the indigenous coastal community? Today, our so-called development of port development, the first thing, who are the victims of development are the coastal community indigenous people. Why can't they be skilled to do this? They can actually teach us more than we can teach them in terms of handling the waterfront. So this is something we need to look at. Thank you.

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: Thank you, Arnab. On an aside, on April 24, President Trump signed an executive order that looked at pushing critical mineral resource seabed mining, both within and beyond national jurisdiction, which will put the ICA, ISA, and the rest of the world in a tizzy. But let's see where it goes. Mr. Gurpreet, the floor is yours.

Gurpreet Singh Khurana: Thank you, sir. Thanks to the organizers to have me here. I'm especially encouraged by the fact that the ICWA is now increasingly focusing on maritime issues, which is really good. What I intend to do is to give a better understanding to you, especially the youngsters and students, of the functional aspects of the MDA from a military perspective, which is actually the flavor of the day, although, of course, leading from very unfortunate circumstances. But before I do that, again, essentially for the students, some fundamentals that when you study and write about maritime issues, please be very careful about using the right term and the concept. For instance, the sea lines of communication is not the same as international shipping lanes.

Let me explain. International shipping lanes are the usual lanes, the most navigationally safe and commercially viable routes, which are used in normal times, which is a very generic nature. But when you talk about sea lines of communication, it has got a strategic connotation because it pertains to a stock of a particular country. And another instance is IUU fishing. Some people call it illegal fishing. The fact that it is IUU fishing means that it is not always illegal. And that is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea clearly says that fishing outside your territorial jurisdiction is not illegal. And therefore, the word unregulated and unreported comes.

And similarly is the case with irregular migration. It's not illegal migration from the international law perspective. Of course, from the national law perspective, if it violates your national domestic law, you can say that it is illegal migration.

So let me go to the main subject of the MDA now. Let me start by what's happening between India and Pakistan. So India took off the terror camps in Pakistan, occupied Kashmir and Pakistan proper. And thereafter, last night you must have seen that the Pakistani, they attacked Indian air bases. And you must have seen in the television the flashes of light, which were essentially these swarm drones and missiles of Pakistan trying to hit the Indian air bases. And they, those lights, the flashes of light that you saw on the TV were nothing but our air defense, integrated air defense system, with the layered defense taking them on.

So the air defense system consists of shooters, sensors, but that's not all. That is simple. You will have a shooter, which can be kinetic or can be non-kinetic, for instance, in terms of directed energy weapons or whatever. And sensors, you would understand to pick them up. What's coming at you? What is the threat? But most important part of that integrated air defense system is the battle management system, which tells the automated system which contact or which target is most threatening to you, which will depend upon the distance from you, from your air base, or the speed at which it is coming, or with the kind of payload that it's carrying. Because they're not all drones, right? They are missiles as well.

Now, this is an automated system, which will tell, automated response will be given as to which one to shoot first. Because they're coming from all directions. Okay, they are swarmed. They may swamp you. They may saturate your defenses. So this is the role of a battle management system. And so this system is an integrated system between the Navy, Army, and the Air Force. They have their own, this is called network centric operations also.

Now each one has their own system and everything is integrated. Of course, the naval system which is Trigun did not, may not have come into play as much as the Army and the system of the Air Force. In the scenario, the attacks on Jammu and Pathankot that you saw last night, but if it was in the maritime domain, the maritime air, the naval network centric operation system, the battle management system would also come to play.

So this, now how is it different from the maritime domain? You would argue that these swan drones or missiles are coming at a very great speed so it's more difficult. Whereas in the maritime domain, things are slow, they are slow moving so it is much easier. But let me tell you, for those of you who have gone to sea, you will realize the sea is a very vast, vast domain and that is the reason why we missed that boat, that fishing trawler called Kuber on which Kasab was coming.

And that is, of course, the 9-11 triggered this thought in the Americans, so they came up with the MDA concept. For India, 26-11 was the 9-11 moment and it was a coincidence that that triggered us to pull up our socks because we realised that we were bad, our MDA was ineffective. And then therefore we went in for overhauling our MDA in terms of sensors and various sensors. I am not going to go into detail and all, the kind of the NC3I the grid, the IMAC, the information management and communication system in Gurgaon which is going to become the national MDA centre and so on and so forth.

Now another important thing here is, what are you trying to do? Do you think that if you get to know each and every boat in the entire maritime domain around your waters, will that help or will that only help? To what? Can you be perfect? Can you know everything what is there? No, you cannot be perfect. But whatever you know, this is the concept of MDA, whatever you know helps you to segregate the contacts on your radar scope, which you don't know. So the contacts which you don't know are suspect. So it is easy for you to queue on and identify or track or investigate those contacts which are now very few. So therefore your responses to your security becomes better and that is the concept of MDA in the security domain.

Now I will come to specifically the military role. In this scenario of India-Pakistan conflict, for instance, how does the MDA that I was talking to you about Kuber and Kasab, does it help you to also enhance your defense preparedness? That is the question. Yes it does. Because maritime domain is a common domain. You have civilian ships, you have various kinds of marine activity and you have naval ships. You have Pakistani naval ships there, you have Chinese submarines there and so on and so forth. 

So, even if you are signing white shipping agreements with so many countries in the Indo-Pacific region, why do you call it white shipping? Because they are not grey shipping. White shipping is benign. White shipping means all civilian. But remember I told you, even if you get to know what you are getting to know, it will help you solve the problem of grey shipping. Grey shipping agreement you cannot sign. At least India cannot sign otherwise you will have to be a military ally. You will have to get into a military alliance treaty which you do not want to. So even the white shipping agreement that you sign will help you. 

Now coming to the India-Pakistan, so if tomorrow or day after or a week later India thinks hot the balloon goes up, we really are in a full-fledged war and we want to conduct a blockade. So for doing anything from the naval concept of operations, for undertaking any military mission by the Navy, you first have to achieve sea control. The only two exceptions to that, one is a submarine, you do not need to have sea control and one is if you are doing by special forces, inserting special forces through your submarine or by sea by other means.

So other than that, all naval missions, whether you want to interdict the sea lines of communication of Pakistan or you want to blockade Pakistan or even if you want to do a line attack against Karachi, Gwadar, Pasni, whatever, wherever they have shifted their F-16s to. So for whatever you do, you need MDA, that is the point I am trying to make. And whatever you are doing which you have tried to do after 26-11 has helped you to achieve that MDA. So this is Pakistan. 

What about the China, the Chinese? So the Chinese, if there is a war, even before there is a war, there will be a lot of chaos. There will be adversaries, even with Pakistan, you never know what they are doing, they may be cutting your underwater cables. It's perfectly legal as per laws of armed conflict. So you need to monitor your… I'm so happy that Arnab talked about many things. He said that underwater domain is a very neglected domain, UDA is a separate subject, actually. It's so complex, and that's why it's neglected. But we try to club it with MDA. Many countries don't. They have the reasons of their own. There are good reasons to club it with MDA, because everything is dual use. 

And therefore, when you're clubbing it with MDA, then your adversaries and the international community do not get to focus on what you're doing against what are we doing in the military domain in the underwater, because that catches your attention, and you don't want that to happen. So it's good that we club it with the merit MDA, under the MDA, although it's a very different aspect. 

And so I'm talking about things beyond SDG and marine environment, which Arnab talked about. But one thing good, I take it from here, the civil-military fusion is very important, because the reasons that he said, your investment in R&D and your capacity building, you cannot invest so much in a military this thing. You have to do it in the civil domain. Only then, the application of that, you can transpose into that. And a few things about the PLA Navy submarines, they will be tracking your nuclear attack submarines and your nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the Bay of Bengal. So you need to track them, you need to know where they are. 

Now, UDA, from the military perspective, what is UDA? Is it just getting to know where is the PLA Navy submarine? Or in terms of the MDA, where is the PLA Navy ships? Through a satellite, through whatever? No, it's much, much more than that. And I'm glad that Arnab showed you some slides. It's about hydrography, bathymetry, not only getting to know the depths, the profile, the underwater profile, the profile of the seabed, because that is where the submarines operate. It's also to know the characteristics of the water, the salinity and the temperature, because the only way that you can detect a submarine and prosecute a submarine is through sonar. 

And sonar is sound, everything is about sound, acoustics. The sound waves bend based on the salinity and the temperature profiles, and the submarines can hide within that profile if they know. And therefore, to detect it again, you need to know. It's more than that. UDA is even more than that. And he talked about acoustics. You need to gather, make a data bank, acoustic data bank of your adversary submarines or even surface ships and every ship has got a peculiar, a unique signature which you can hear and the sonar operator, if he is smart he can say this is Delhi class ship or this is Jango class frigate or whatever. 

And this data bank is not easy to make. It takes decades and even if you have got your closest partner, Japan, Australia, U.S. whatever, they will not share the data bank with you. It is so sensitive. Okay. I'll end there. Thank you.

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: Thank you, Gurpreet. You brought up a lot of specific issues. Do we have time? We do? Yeah. So we'll take a bouquet of questions. So please identify yourself and to whom the question is aimed at. So we'll start with the students, sir, with your permission. Thank you. We have one. Go ahead.

Unidentified Participant: Good afternoon, sir. So my question is to you only. You have mentioned the trilateral corporation. So I just wanted to know how much of a positive impact can multilateral agreements like the WTO Fisheries Subsidy Agreement can have in the Indo-Pacific? And to Abhijit Singh, sir, how concerned should we be about the climate change affecting fishing communities in the Indo-Pacific, especially the small-scale fisheries and fisherwomen? And also South China Sea has become an area for potential seabed mining and extensive underwater cables. So should India be concerned about the activities in the South China Sea?

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: One question, that young man in the green shirt.

Rohan Patra: Thank you, sir, for your delightful thoughts. Sir, my name is Rohan Patra. I am a master's student from Christ University, Bangalore, studying international studies. So my question to you is, you talked about, you know, Chinese research vessels coming into the Indian Ocean. Now we as Indian government have a lot of mutually friendship agreements with a lot of countries who have stated that anti-India activities will not be tolerated. But the Chinese are playing very smart. What they are saying is we won't allow military vessels, we are doing it for geographical purpose. How do we as Indians counter this very smart act by the Chinese?

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: Take one more.

Unidentified Participant: Shripati, I am a research fellow with ICWA. Two questions, sir. One is when you are talking about MDA, which aspect of MDA is more serious? The security aspect or the non-security aspect to Captain Gurpreet? When you MDA, which has got a greater impact, the non-security aspect of it, in terms of mapping the fishery resource, seabed mining and everything, or is it the security aspect which has got a larger impact?

Second question may be to the chair himself. Sir, when you take UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Seas or any other international regime, they were largely written in a different era where sovereignty was the foundation of such documents. Now, do you think it is time that we revisit all these structures from a MDA, UDA perspective and not sovereignty? Because when sovereignty now is getting blurred with the number of players that come into the domain. Thank you.

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: Was there anyone behind? Yes, that young lady. We will take the second set after this.

Anjali Gaur: Good evening to all the panelists. Thank you for the insightful session on MDA in the Indo-Pacific region. I am Anjali Gaur, a Master's student of International Relations from South Asian University, New Delhi. So, I have basically two questions, focusing primarily on the strategic aspect of the Indo-Pacific region. So, first, to what extent can an enhanced MDA help India mitigate ontological insecurities arising from China's expanding maritime presence in Sri Lanka's ports and Djibouti's ports?

And secondly, what strategic measures can India adopt to reclaim its traditional primacy and position in the region? Thank you.

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: And this question is to?

Anjali Gaur: To all of the panelists whoever can answer.

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: All right. We'll take this first one. Abhijit there is a question to you and then Gurpreet.

Abhijit Singh: I am going to start with the question on climate change. I think all of us have observed that MDA is more than just a security construct or a traditional security construct. There is an element of non-traditional security. And increasingly, countries, particularly in the Pacific, I had mentioned, are greatly aware of the fact that environment protection, resource management, is a big thing when it comes to MDA. So, look at the way that this platform called Skylight has been developed. It's a platform that's been developed by the U.S. It's being used increasingly in Pacific countries, and they are gradually trying to bring it to the Indian Ocean also.

A big component there is keeping track of IUU phishing, or illegal phishing. And a lot of countries are very worried about the fact that China is such a major player in the maritime domain in terms of having their fishing fleet present in remote corners of the world. And a lot of work in Europe also focuses on Chinese presence in the waters of West Africa. So they have their own satellites that look at some of this activity. So yes, non-traditional security, particularly climate change, is really critical to MDA.

Your second question was on South China Sea. And I'm going to make a sort of omnibus comment linking what I said about non-traditional with China's presence and Chinese activities in the South China Sea. Look, understand it like this, that MDA is not just about data sharing. It's also a way to control data. It's also about data control. And it's a way in which you decide how information is shared. And what is the political consequence of sharing that information with a particular set of partners?

So the reality is that EU and the U.S., which are the two big players in MDA that have developed their own technologies, that have their own constellations, they have their own aggregator platforms, they have their own commercial systems. They actually don't share a lot of technologies. These are technologies that are meant for their partners. So the EU does a lot of their information sharing with African countries and that West Africa, Gulf of Guinea, etc. The U.S. is very active in the Pacific. And that thing actually goes to the heart of MDA. That MDA is about developing technologies and getting people dependent on those technologies. It's about developing a dependence on your ability to gather data.

So when it comes to disputed areas, like the South China Sea, I personally, as an analyst, would be very keen to see what is the level of information sharing that is happening in disputed areas. Because in disputed areas, there are a number of legal, ethical, regulatory questions that MDA raises, which haven't actually been satisfactorily answered. Conceptually, MDA sounds great, but you've got to go to the fine print to actually read the way in which this information is being shared. And therefore, it's important, not from a security point of view, to look at what the Chinese are doing. Of course, the Chinese are doing a lot of things. They're involved in illegal phishing, etc. But what's the level of data sharing that is happening between the countries that are concerned about the Chinese being there? That I would be very interested in.

There was also a question on sovereignty, which is actually not to me. It is to, I think, Captain Khurana, but I will just take a stab at that question about sovereignty. Well, data sovereignty is at the heart of MDA. There's a certain set of activities happening in your EEZs? Do you want a foreign system looking at those activities, gathering it, and then presenting it to you in a way that influences your decision-making systems? That's the important question that is to be answered.

So as I said in my remarks, this is not value-neutral. The fact that you are increasingly dependent on foreign technology means that you have to be ready for a moment where that technology, where that data will be gathered in a certain way, and it will be presented to you in a certain way, and that will influence the manner in which your top brass takes an important decision on national security.

As regards UDA, I actually didn't talk very much about UDA because my paper doesn't talk about UDA. UDA is a great concept, and a lot of what Arnab says actually I agree with. But let me say this, at the risk of sounding a bit sort of negative, pessimistic, is that when it comes to the underwater domain, you have to be very careful with the way you look at technologies. This concept is more aspirational than it is operational, because sound waves do not propagate in the same way as electromagnetic waves do. Underwater domain is intensely complex, and there's so much of data attenuation. A lot of the technologies that have come in still don't give you a clear picture of what's happening deep down in the seas. There's lots of ambient noise.

So we've got to accept this with a pinch of salt. It is great. If it works, it's very nice. And lastly, we've got to have something that is doctrinally viable. You can have a doctrine that will allow you to fuse all of these technologies and come together. So rather than just be ambitious and aspirational about certain technologies, I think we've got to look at it in a way that is it doable? Is it practical? Is it viable? Can we implement it? Is it implementable? That's what we've got to be concerned about. Thank you.

Gurpreet Singh Khurana: There are two questions which are actually related to my expertise. The first one was about the Chinese research vessels, and the answer is actually the same for this another question which was asked about what can we do against the Chinese in Djibouti and Sri Lanka ports. So the answer to this has two facets. One is the facet of international law. Now Chinese research vessels doing any kind of activity in the Indian maritime zones has been done, but you know our approach, Indian approach, was a little naive. It was soft and naive, but now we are becoming smarter.

Unlike the Chinese, China is becoming harder, and they are doing all sorts of funny things like with their grappling anchor they are hooking on to the sonar of these research vessels of the Americans, what is happening in the South China Sea. We are not going in that direction. But our approach is becoming smarter. Because the UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, unfortunately doesn't talk about military service. Because military issues were left out of the Convention because they were sensitive issues.

So therefore, earlier in 2001, when we sort of shooed off a U.S. research vessel in our EEZ, we said you are spying here, you are doing military surveys. So the Americans got back to us and said, oh, so UNCLOS doesn't prohibit military service because it's for the safety of our ship and military activities are not prohibited. And so we were red-faced, we didn't know what to do. And the same thing we used to do with the Chinese vessels when they were in our EEZ. Now we have become smart. Because the UNCLOS doesn't talk about military surveys, but it does talk about marine scientific research. Because marine scientific research is linked to economic exploitation of your rights in your EEZ. And it says that if you are doing marine scientific research, you must take the consent of the coastal state and whatever results of the survey, you must share it with the coastal state.

And so now we have got back when we found a Chinese research vessel off Port Blair a couple of years ago. We said, you are doing MSR here without our consent. And they didn't have anything to say. So our diplomatic protest went on very well with the international community. Now this is as per the EEZ is concerned. This brings me to the second part of, the second aspect of the answer, which is geopolitics. Which connects up with the second question about what will India do against, to convince Djibouti, Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has given its Hambantota for 99 years lease. What will you do? What will you do if the Chinese research vessels are undertaking research vessels outside Indian EEZ?

Well, international law doesn't forbid it. You cannot do anything as per international law and therefore geopolitics comes in. And therein comes in the issue of your areas of interest and your geostrategic frontiers. India's geostrategic frontiers which are expanding much beyond India's territorial confines. And the concept of geostrategic frontier is such which gives you strategic depth, but to be able to preserve your overseas and geopolitical interests, like for instance a Chinese research vessel doing marines or whatever, military surveys of Hambantota or Djibouti, you need to be able to use all tools at your disposal.

It's not necessarily you need to have only military tool. Military tool, of course, works as an instrument of foreign policy in peacetime. But you have many other tools. You have diplomatic power. You have, of course, military power. You have science and technology power. You have diplomacy. You have got so many other forms of power. All countries use this. Do not ever think that only the Chinese use economic power against their adversaries like Philippines and Australia. No, sir. No, ma'am. We do that also. All countries do that and therefore you need leverages. These are also called leverages. You need to use leverages against these countries to be able to preserve your interest.

The second question about impact. Now, you said military and non-military. I would put it in security and civilian. Because military, I also would like to include security against non-traditional threats like terrorism. So this is something which really you cannot say which has a greater impact. It will depend from country to country. It will depend from time to time. The concept of MDA emerged out of 9-11 and for us after 26-11, as I said. And so at that point in time, even now, sometimes your security, whether military or, I mean, against state actors or non-state actors, that will take precedence. Because the civilian issues, the non-security issues like environmental protection and prospecting for mineral resources, these are long. It's not that they're not important. And I'm not implying that they don't have impact. They will have a great impact. But that impact will come later.

But the unfortunate thing is, you see President Trump, Paris Climate Accord, gone for a six. Why? Because the policies, your policies will change, which is unfortunate because in any case for democracies, because they come for a five-year term or a four-year term. So this is a problem. Thank you.

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: Okay. I'll just, quick responses to the questions asked me. One is on the trilat question that came from, the first question is, I'm a big fan of trilats and let's limit it to minilats till five nations. Anything beyond five, that grouping sort of flounders for many reasons. The advantage of a minilat or a trilat is that you get those like-minded nations together who have convergence on a certain aspect. You thrash it out, you work it out, you work towards a solution. You've got your solution, you work to the next agenda. So trilats today are actually taking over where multilaterals are failing and most of these trilats are within the grouping of those multilaterals.

One example I can give you which unfortunately floundered was India, France, Australia, a great start. I was party to the initial discussion, great start, but we need to start afresh. One trilat that needs to be actually boosted is India, Indonesia, Australia. Similarly, if you have trilats within the IOR, it is going to help capacity and capability developing, but it requires a leadership role and it requires somebody in the driver's seat. And then, of course, India has to take on that handle. So that is why I had mentioned trilats, UNCLOS, your question, and let us agree that UNCLOS is based on two concepts, sovereignty and freedom of navigation. The rest is all left to interpretation.

So due to those interpretations, what we are seeing in many cases is there is a clash between these two concepts. South China Sea is one example. Sovereignty is an issue, but freedom of navigation is also an issue. So that is an interpretation. Revision of UNCLOS, which you had mentioned, I personally agree that there are certain aspects of UNCLOS that need to be revised. Article 101 definition of piracy is definitely one, but that is my personal opinion.

However, UNCLOS III took a greater period of four decades, and I am starting from 1956 when UNCLOS I came and was started, Constitution of the Nations, perhaps the most successful international convention that the globe has signed. High Seas Treaty comes a very paltry lower down. There is not much of, I think, on that. I raised this issue of revision of UNCLOS in 2012 in Singapore and the late Commodore Bateman of Australia, again a very passionate UNCLOS addict. Most of us on this panel are UNCLOS addicts in one way or the other. He said, son, don't ever try that. The ghosts of the people who put this together from 1956 will haunt you for the rest of your life. So I will leave it at that.

But yes, but if we do that, it will just fall apart. The Antarctic Treaty System is up for revision in 2048. But I shudder to think if that falls apart, because then it is free for all of exploration and exploitation out there, all right. I will leave it.

And Chinese research vessels, I will just add on to what Gurpreet said. You know how they are operating. These ships are electrically operated. They don't need to enter port for fuel. They grow their own vegetables in containers. They are self-sufficient. The limitation is of the crew, like a nuclear submarine, is that they need to touch land once in a while to feel sane, with all due respect to the submariners or nuclear-powered boats here. So that is the way they operate.

So why are they here? There is a gap. Nobody else is providing them the technology or the ability to do MSR in their own waters. If we had the technology, we would have given China competition. So there is a gap. Even if we had the technology, then there is a trust factor which comes under geopolitics. And I mentioned Maldives for a certain reason, because it's practicing strategic autonomy. It's balancing two powers. Sri Lanka did the same. We made some noise. For one year, they banned all research vessels, which is legitimate as per UNCLOS. But you can't permanently close your waters.

So this is a constant game and this comes in also answers the question of our strategic leverage in expanding China. It is a game. You have technology, you have something that benefits the other nations, they will take it. These are gaps that need to be filled up and therefore we need to actually step on the accelerator and get our own research vessels going, which we are doing now and seabed mining is the next big issue. So I'll here. Arnab go ahead.

Arnab Das: Two quick points, the 2021 Quad Summit in Tokyo, they realized that the Global South or the small island developing nations are not interested in the security dialogue. So Quad declared what is called that they will do data sharing for greater public good and they also talked about the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum. When you say data sharing for greater public good, what is greater public good? That we need to understand.

Now the second is the mechanism of sharing data. As Chair also mentioned, there are these military data fusion centres, I mean including one in Gurgaon, Singapore and all these places. Does these military data centres understand what is greater public good? So we need to look at this, even MDA data sharing, which Abhijit also mentioned. So that is something we need to really explore and what is the capacity to do this.

So the second aspect is about the data in the Indian Ocean region, Chinese are coming. I want to draw your attention to, after the Cold War ended, the American establishment thought that there is no challenge to them from anywhere, but towards the end of the last century they realized that the Chinese have developed significant capabilities, underwater capabilities that they can challenge and they need to operate in the South China Sea. So that is where the littoral aspect came into being, but they knew that they have no data on the tropical waters, so they deployed what is called Asia X and given the geopolitical situation at that time, it could not have been a military operation.

So University of Washington led six universities in the U.S., did the entire modelling and simulation for South China Sea and East China Sea. And for the second phase, when they had to do field validation, they came to the South China Sea area and they got another 20 universities, including these six and Asia X was launched. This was a massive, what we call a shallow water acoustic measurement exercise for collecting underwater data.

And after Asia X, the Americans started deploying drones on a regular basis. Every hydrographic ship or any other vessel or opportunity used to deploy acoustic sensors and also acoustic arrays and also drones to collect data and validate. The Chinese initially, even in the Asia X, Chinese universities participated. I was in China sometime back and they said that we knew that we don't have a capability to do such a massive swarms exercise.

But if you look at the whole sequence of events, in 2015, the Chinese announced what is called the underwater Great Wall project. And just after that, the first Trump presidency, we had a lot of confrontation in the name of freedom of navigation. So the Chinese now, and even the first Trump presidency, those 20 days when he is President desig, the Chinese captured a drone from U.S. in Bowditch. They kept it for three days and President Trump had to break protocol and make a statement that this is an attack on the American sovereignty. And after that, you saw the belligerence which China displayed.

So this is something we need to understand. So the similar swarms exercise is hugely required in the Indian Ocean, even for underwater search and recovery. How will you deploy? MH370, when it fell down and the search had to start, for the underwater search, they had to deploy AUVs, autonomous underwater vehicles. It took them one year, that search team, I met the search team leader, it took them one year to develop the underwater charts of the right resolution, one year to deploy AUVs. So that is the requirement of underwater domain awareness.

And even I want to draw your attention to USS Connecticut, which hit a seamount, deploying even a top-notch U.S. nuclear submarine can go wrong if you don't have one. And that is the complexity which Abhijit also mentioned of UDA in the tropical waters, highlanders.

Sarabjeet Singh Parmar: All right, I think we've answered and taken a lot of ground out here. So a big hand of applause to the panelists. Keshav, back to you.

Keshav Verma: It goes without saying that we all had a fascinating and enriching panel discussion today. On behalf of ICWA, I would like to express my gratitude to the distinguished chair and the panelists. My special thanks to all of our members and the audience. To know more about ICWA's research work, events, outreach programs, and publications, do visit our website and social media handles on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. Thank you, and please join us for the high tea in the foyer. Thank you once again.

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List of Participants in the Discussion

1. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar, Additional Secretary, ICWA
2. Capt. Sarabjeet Singh Parmar (Retd.), Distinguished Fellow, Council for Strategic and Defence Research, New Delhi: Chair
3. Mr. Abhijit Singh, Retired naval officer and Former Head, Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi;
4. Cdr. (Dr.) Arnab Das, Founder and Director, Maritime Research Center, Pune
5. Capt. (Dr.) Gurpreet Singh Khurana, Professor, Naval War College, Goa
6. Keshav Verma, Research Associate, ICWA