Imagery taken by DigitalGlobe in January 2013 provides an update on the construction of India's new Extremely Low-Frequency (ELF) facility in the south of the country.
The construction began in March 2012, when Admiral Nirmal Verma, chief of the naval staff of the Indian Navy (IN), laid the cornerstone for the ELF facility near the village of Vijaya Narayanam, about 23 km north of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu. It is co-located with the IN's Very Low-Frequency (VLF) communications station, which transmits at 18.2 kHz.
The ELF station, which is believed to be being built by Indian firm Larsen & Toubro, will have nuclear-hardened bunkers and is expected to be commissioned in 2015. Russia is closely associated with the research and development for the facility, which is expected to be similar to Russia's own ELF transmitter at the ZEVS facility near Murmansk.
ELF transmission is used to communicate very brief commands to submerged submarines. Such transmissions can travel thousands of miles and through extended depths of seawater. ELF transmissions are generally initiated during circumstances in which conventional communications channels have been disrupted or destroyed.
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