Coastal Command Structure

The Home Minister P Chidambaram announced in parliament that India will be setting up a new Coastal Command to secure our coastline. India's coastline is over 7500 kilometers long. The recent terror attacks in Mumbai started with the terrorists arriving from the sea. Many of our strategic landmarks like oil refineries, nuclear power plants, heritage spots and tourist places, are located close to the sea. We must ensure that this route cannot be used by our enemies to launch a strike against us.

Tiered security system

India has a three-tier coastal security system. Marine police guard the waters up to 12 nautical miles from the coastline, then the Coast Guards look after the sea between 12 and 200 nautical miles and the high seas beyond 200 nautical miles are guarded by the Navy.

In 2005 the government had proposed a coastal security scheme and allocated Rs. 400 crores to it. Most of this money went into setting up new marine police stations and buying boats for the marine police and the coast guards.

Today all our maritime agencies put together dont have a total of even 500 cruiser boats. But with a coastline of over 7500 kilometers even 7500 boats would not be enough to secure it completely. We must realize that surveillance need not be physical. In fact it should not be. Physical security has holes and we cannot afford holes in the security system.

Also very importantly it is necessary to have a single line of command. We lost too much time after the terrorists hit Mumbai. Our security agencies got activated very late.

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Casting a security net: Plugging security holes

We need to put the whole command and intelligence structure under a single point of control. Physical surveillance must be buttressed with a security system that includes the use of satellite imaging, sonar and radar. Such a security structure will give a view of ships over water and underwater. Such a security system will allow our agencies to see farther and wider than any physical surveillance system alone.

Objects many nautical miles away can be detected using a sonar. Sonar uses sound waves underwater to detect man made objects like, ships, submarines, mines, autonomous underwater vehicles, etc. An officer sitting in the command center in Delhi can monitor what is going on in the Indian ocean and direct the coast guard to locations where suspicious activity is detected. So far the Navy has concentrated on detecting large battle class vessels because the perceived threat was from foreign navies. However, now that the war is being waged through covert means, sonar technology has to be evolved to detect smaller vessels in the sea. Radar and satellite imaging need to be combined with sonar surveillance to trace the path of ships and other smaller sea vessels. Using these technologies an impregnable security net needs to be woven around our coasts.

We must also put a Sea Traffic Control structure in place. This can be modeled along the lines of an air traffic control system. Every sea vessel should be identifiable by the sea traffic control using active or passive tags and these tags should be used to track them.

Salient features of coastal command

• Sea Traffic Control: Identification of sea vessels based on active and/or passive tagging - sea vessels are recognized and directed using a control mechanism similar air traffic control
• Electronic Surveillance Net: Monitoring and intelligence gathering using sonar, radar and satellite imaging. We must cast an electronic net around our coasts
  
• Physical Monitoring: Agencies including marine police, coast guard, navy using high speed boats, ships and aircraft carriers
  
• Single Line of Command: Inputs from all of the above need to be analysed by a single nodal point and action taken on them
  

We have to take action. We have to put systems in place. Importantly our policy makers need to realize that a command structure cannot be bought over the shelf, neither can it be copied from other countries. In fact no country today has an advanced coastal command system like this in place, because they don't need it. We need it so lets build it. To do this effectively we have to involve our security agencies, scientific institutions and policy makers to build a structure that fits our needs.

Read: Fighting Terror Series