Underwater domain awareness (UDA) is the aspect of maritime domain awareness focused on the underwater sector, including, from a security perspective, sea lines of communication (SLOC), coastal waters and varied maritime assets with reference to hostile intent and the proliferation of submarine and mine capabilities intended to limit access to the seas and littoral waters. The military requirement is not the only motivation for undersea domain awareness. The earth's undersea geophysical activities as they relate to the well-being of humans is also relevant, as monitoring such activities can provide vital clues to minimize the impact of devastating natural disasters.
Undersea commercial activities need precise inputs on the availability of resources for exploitation providing the best possible results for economic gains. The regulators, on the other hand, need to know the pattern of exploitation to manage a sustainable plan. The many activities, commercial and military, have created a significant impact on the environment; therefore, conservation initiatives need to precisely estimate any resulting habitat degradation and species vulnerability and assess the status of affected ecosystems. The scientific and research communities are engaged in efforts to update available knowledge and access to the multiple aspects of the undersea domain.
History Possibly the first reference of the term underwater domain awareness (UDA) is seen in a paper by Lt. Cdr. David Finch, titled "Comprehensive Underwater Domain Awareness: A Concept Model" in fall 2011, published in Canadian Naval Review. In this article, Finch makes no reference to maritime domain awareness while discussing underwater domain awareness. The Americans who originated this term, have used MDA as an enabler for the Maritime Operational Threat Response Plan. The MDA framework as declared in the October 2005 US document "National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness for the National Strategy for Maritime Security" has no mention of the underwater threat or its mitigation strategy. While formulating the MDA framework in the early 21st century, the Americans did not consider the underwater threat to be substantial whereas post 9/11, the US administration did recognize the possibility of terrorists using other means to harm US interests; however, the underwater threat did not explicitly figure in their strategic formulations. The author Steven C Boraz brings out the myths and realities of the era and recognizes the limitations of a Navy driven MDA. The US Coast Guard is the primary agency responsible for MDA through the Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security (PWCS) mission. Significant investments have been made for their surface and air assets along with increased command and control capabilities; however, little has been done to expand the PWCS mission to the underwater domain. Nation states like the US, Japan, Germany, North Korea, and Iran have credible submersible capabilities that can be deployed to carry out large scale damage to maritime assets. These states are also known to assist non-state actors against targeted adversaries or generic terrorist activities. Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been documented for their submersible capabilities and deployment against their stated adversaries.Lt Donald B. Davis, USCG Guard Reserve, Port Clinton, Ohio "The Submersible Threat to Maritime Homeland Security" Master of Arts in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defence), The Naval Postgraduate School, Sep 2013.
The underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) used in multiple applications of underwater surveillance have unique challenges in terms of harsh underwater channel behavior with low bandwidth, high propagation delays, and higher bit error rates. Additionally, the variable speed of sound, and non-negligible node mobility due to water currents pose a unique set of challenges for localization in UWSNs.Hwee-Pink Tan et al., "A Survey of Techniques and Challenges in Underwater Localization" Ocean Engineering, Volume 38, Issues 14–15, October 2011, Pages 1663-1676. The underwater technology development and more specifically acoustic technology development matured during the cold war period when the US and the Soviet Union invested heavily in the deep waters and achieved significant success in stabilizing sonar performance. Massive experiments were undertaken at sea to validate the algorithms and minimize the medium uncertainties.Urick, R.J. (1983) Principles of Underwater Sound. 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York. After the cold war, the naval theatre's shift to littoral waters presented their own challenges; thus, principles that stabilized sonar performance in deep waters did not apply, resulting in sub-optimal performance.Lt Cdr Peter M. Morisseau, USCG, "Coast Guard Maritime Security in the Underwater Domain", Acquisition Research Program Sponsored Report Series, Graduate School of Business & Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School, Feb 2015 During the Cold War, military investments and developments in technology for national security received high priority from the political leadership; however, that same level of support was not extended into the post Cold War period.
The Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) was a top-secret project involving a large scale, underwater sensor network driven by the US Navy from 1949 to monitor Russian vessels in the GIUK Gap. Towards the later part of the cold war, the facility was opened to academic research in an effort to support operational and maintenance costs. Doing so resulted in a significant boost to research in the field of underwater acoustics, leading to the stabilization of sonar performance in deep waters for multiple non-military applications. The Naval Facility Point Sur experimental facility which was started in 1958 was shut down in 1984 for lack of funding. The ship shock test facility and the SURTASS-LFA project was shifted and scaled down due to environmental concerns raised by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). NRDC compelled the Navy to file environmental impact statement (EIS) for the first time in the early 90s. In 1996, 13 Cuvier's beaked whales were found stranded alive off the coast of Kyparissiakos Gulf, Greece. Alexandros Frantzis, the scientific director of the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute linked the stranding to the use of sonar in the immediate area. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was involved in a joint international experiment using a high powered low-frequency sonar at the time of the stranding. The event became a rallying point for environmental activists who demanded a complete ban on such trials, and the US Navy agreed to fund research to determine the impacts on marine animals. These incidents and more reflected a major shift in geopolitical realities where socio-economic issues had to be balanced with national security demands.
India and the Indian Ocean region 21st century India is emerging as a maritime nation with a significant strategic push for maritime capability and capacity building. There has been a shift from a continental outlook to maritime power, and involvement in regional and global geostrategic and geopolitical formulations. The growing recognition of the Indo-Pacific as a single strategic space and a construct to counter growing Chinese dominance in the region also recognizes India's centrality to the global influences and the increasing role of India in America's strategic calculations. The underwater component of the MDA that may be referred as underwater domain awareness (UDA), has somehow not been given enough attention that it deserves particularly in the Indian Ocean, given the security threats that exist, perpetuated by the non-state actors. In the context of India in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), there are multiple unique challenges to achieve effective UDA, both socioeconomic, and science and technology-driven, that are rooted in its geostrategic origin.
Efforts countries in the region to import technology and strategy from the west have produced limited outcomes. The present understanding in many strategic discourses is that UDA is an extension of MDA, more focused on security requirements given the volatile regional dynamics. However, the sub-optimal performance of the sonar systems that may be deployed for any situational awareness efforts, in the tropical littoral waters of the IOR will present significant challenges. Thus massive acoustic capability and capacity building would be the core requirement for any UDA framework. The fragmented approach by the stakeholders, namely the national security apparatus, the blue economic entities, the environment and the disaster management authorities, and the science and technology providers have always limited the resource availability for any indigenous efforts to overcome local challenges. The UDA framework proposed in this work goes beyond being a mere underwater extension of the MDA formulation as understood so far and attempts to bring a more comprehensive formulation that facilitates pooling of resources and synergizing of efforts across stakeholders both at the national as well as the regional level to be able to truly participate in the Indo-Pacific strategic space. The proposed UDA framework is intended to ensure a safe, secure, sustainable growth model for all in the region to complement the "Security And Growth for All in the Region" (SAGAR) vision announced in March 2015.
Concept The concept of underwater domain awareness (UDA) in a more specific sense describes the desire to know what is happening in the undersea parts of relevant maritime areas. From the security perspective, this includes defending Sea lines of communication (SLOC), coastal waters, and varied maritime assets against the proliferation of submarines and mine capabilities intended to limit the access to the seas and littoral waters. The military requirement is not the only motivation to generate undersea domain awareness. Undersea geophysical activities have a lot of relevance to the well-being of humankind, and monitoring such activities could provide vital clues to minimize the impact of devastating natural calamities.
Commercial activities in the undersea realm need precise inputs on the availability of resources to be able to effectively and efficiently explore and exploit them for economic gains. The regulators on the other hand need to know the pattern of exploitation to manage a sustainable plan. With so much commercial and military activity, there is significant impact on the environment. Any conservation initiative needs to precisely estimate the habitat degradation and species vulnerability caused by these activities and assess the ecosystem status. The scientific and research community needs to engage and continuously update knowledge of the multiple aspects of the undersea domain. The underlying requirement for all the stakeholders is to know the developments in the undersea domain, make sense out of these developments and then respond effectively and efficiently to them before they take shape of an event.