La France et l’Inde ont signé un accord dans le domaine de la surveillance maritime par satellite
PAR
LAURENT LAGNEAU · 7 MARS 2019
La France et l’Inde ont signé un accord dans le domaine de la surveillance maritime par satellite
Translation
France and India have signed an agreement in the field of maritime satellite surveillance
BY LAURENT LAGNEAU - MARCH 7, 2019
The Indian Ocean is vital to the Chinese economy. Hence its investments in this part of the world, as part of its strategy known as the "new silk routes"[OBOR, for One Belt, One Road] and the deployment of its naval forces to secure its supplies and, more generally, its trade flows.
However, this naval presence is perceived by New Delhi as a threat, or even a challenge to its security. Indeed, India sees this Chinese strategy as an attempt to contain or even encircle. And this is all the more so since China has made Pakistan one of its closest allies.
As Indo-Pakistani relations are already not the best in the world, New Delhi and Islamabad also have a territorial dispute, called the "Sir Creek dispute", over the boundaries of their respective exclusive economic zones in the Gulf of Oman. This area is considered to contain important fishery resources as well as oil and gas reserves.
In addition to rivalry with its Pakistani and Chinese counterparts and the need to protect trade routes, the Indian Navy obviously has the task of monitoring the Indian EEZ and the country's maritime approaches, particularly against the terrorist threat.
In 2018, and in order to "break" what is seen as Chinese containment, New Delhi concluded an agreement with Paris to allow Indian Navy ships to use French naval bases established in the Indian Ocean, which is also a major issue for France and, more broadly, the European Union[75% of its exports transit through it].
And on March 6, during a visit to New Delhi by its President, Jean-Yves Le Gall, the National Centre for Space Studies[CNES] signed another cooperation agreement to develop a maritime surveillance system using space imagery with the Indian Space Research Organisation[ISRO].
This agreement aims "to provide an operational system for monitoring and tracking maritime traffic in the Indian Ocean region, provides for the establishment in India, as from May 2019, of a maritime surveillance centre, the sharing of capacity for processing existing spatial data and the joint development of appropriate algorithms", explains the CNES.
She added: "With respect to the next phase of the program, studies are underway for a joint orbital infrastructure, the operation of which will be shared between the two countries. CNES works with its industrial partners and ISRO to develop the most appropriate technical solution. »
"We have an intensifying relationship with India and maritime surveillance from space is a matter of strategic interest to both our countries. It is by relying on the remarkable integration of the CNES and ISRO teams that we have been able to be very responsive in the deployment of this program, launched during the President of the Republic's State Visit to India just one year ago," Mr. Le Gall pointed out.
As a reminder, the French Navy provides maritime surveillance by satellite via the Trimaran 2 contract, awarded to the Airbus Defence & Space / Telespazio France consortium in 2016, for a period of four years. The future will undoubtedly lie in nanosatellites for surveillance, developed by the Rennes-based start-up Unseenlabs.
In addition, Mr. Le Gall took the opportunity to discuss, with Sivan K, his Indian counterpart, technologies relating to reusable launchers, manned space flights[India has ambitions in this area] and Franco-Indian climate satellites [Megha-Tropiques and Saral-AltiKa, ed].
