The police and
Royal Navy are hunting for a whistleblower who is on the run after publishing a dossier of alleged security failings on board Trident nuclear submarines.
Able Seaman William McNeilly, 25, a newly qualified engineer, claimed that Britain’s nuclear deterrent was a “disaster waiting to happen” in a report detailing 30 alleged safety and security breaches.
He wrote that a chronic manpower shortage meant that “it’s just a matter of time before we’re infiltrated by a psychopath or a terrorist; with this amount of people getting pushed through”.
The Ministry of Defence has launched an investigation into the claims, published in
a 19-page report titled The Secret Nuclear Threat, which it said contained a “number of subjective and unsubstantiated personal views ... with which the Naval Service completely disagrees”.
McNeilly, from Newtownabbey, near Belfast, was due to report back for work at the weekend in Faslane sumbarine base on the Clyde but has since been reported missing. Royal Navy chiefs and civilian police are searching for the seaman.
In the report, published online alongside a picture of his UK passport and Royal Navy identity card, McNeilly said he wanted “to break down the false images of a perfect system that most people envisage exists”.
He described bags going unchecked and that it was “harder getting into most nightclubs” than into control rooms, with broken pin code systems and guards failing to check passes. “All it takes is someone to bring a bomb on board to commit the worst terrorist attack the UK and the world has ever seen,” he wrote.
The 25-year-old said he raised these and other concerns through the chain of command on multiple occasions, but that “not once did someone even attempt to make a change”.
The whistleblower also revealed that there had allegedly been a fire in the missile compartment when the vessel was in harbour. He claimed the blaze was sparked by overheated cables setting light to stacks of toilet roll. “The chief said if it had been at sea there would’ve been about 50 dead bodies on three deck because of the amount of people struggling to find an emergency breathing system,” he claimed.
Angus Robertson, the Scottish National party leader in Westminster, described the claims as extremely concerning and said the allegations add weight to calls to scrap
Trident altogether.
He said: “It reads as a nightmare catalogue of serious safety breaches aboard and alongside these nuclear-armed submarines ... Shortages of all types of crew on these submarines has been well-documented and the description of personnel in extremely stressful situations most be alarming given the huge responsibility some of these sailors are given.
“Failure to follow standard safety procedures is unacceptable in any workplace but on a Vanguard submarine on patrol it could result in extreme tragedy not just for those on board but indeed for the entire planet.”
A Royal Navy spokeswoman said on Monday that the service completely disagreed with McNeill’s assessment, describing the report as containing “a number of subjective and unsubstantiated personal views”.
The spokeswoman said it was right for the allegations to be investigated but that the publishing of the report did not pose a security risk. She added: “The Royal Navy takes security and nuclear safety extremely seriously and we are fully investigating both the issue of the unauthorised release of this document and its contents.
“The naval service operates its submarine fleet under the most stringent safety regime and submarines do not go to sea unless they are completely safe to do so.”
