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 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.
David Finch, titled "Comprehensive Underwater Domain Awareness: A Concept Model" in fall 2011, published in Canadian Naval Review.
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.
[5] 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.
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.
[9] 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.
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 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).
[11] 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.
[citation needed] 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.
[citation needed] 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.
[14] The fragmented approach by the stakeholders, namely the national security apparatus,[clarification needed] 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.
[15] 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.
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.
In the opinion of Arnab Das of the Maritime Research Centre at Pune, India, meaningful engagement of the young for nation building is probably the most critical aspect that deserves attention.
With support bases in the IOR, even conventional diesel submarines more suited to the littorals in large numbers from China can pose a formidable threat for India, if not detected on time.
The 'Undersea Great Wall (UGW)' project has been an ambitious undertaking and an integral part of their soft acoustic capability initiative since 1980 but it was not announced by the China State ShipbuildingCorporation (CSSC) until Dec 2015.
The IOR is considered next richest in the deep sea minerals after the Pacific Ocean, including oil and gas, polymetallic sulfides, cobalt-rich crusts and other materials that have a high potential for accelerated economic growth.
The ever-increasing global demand for resources could also lead to conflict among nations in the region with active backing from nefarious extra-regional powers in the absence of well-defined norms and regulations.
[12] The physical aspect comprises the tropical littoral waters in the IOR that result in sub-optimal sonar performance to achieve any meaningful way ahead for effective UDA.
[citation needed] However, acoustically, whenever there are more interactions with the surface and bottom boundaries that translate to higher distortions due to multi path fading, is defined as shallow waters.
The second is the less aggressive and effective acoustic capacity and capability building thrust due to perceived lack of threat driven by the American hegemony.
The networking technologies have made significant progress and the global communication industry in the RF domain has evolved due to its commercial success.
The buoyancy engine driven underwater gliders are slow, relatively cheap, have long endurance and are less noisy, thus ideally suited for data collection for acoustic surveys.
They are among the recent advancements in autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), but since they are not propeller driven can be used for acoustic data collection as they have low noise and long endurance.
The US needed data to overcome the tropical littoral challenges in the SCS, so the entire experiment was funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) but led by the Academia to camouflage the strategic intent.
The Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 accident and the subsequent search operation was another geopolitical exercise to corner China and its acoustic capability and capacity development initiative by the west.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had more than 90% Chinese passengers and China was very keen to lead the search operation in the IOR, but the role was assigned to Australia, which possibly had no direct stake in the event.