Ali Kefford

Ali Kefford is a naval journalist, who specialises in submarine warfare. She has joined six Royal Navy nuclear submarines at sea, including a Trident deterrent boat.

Christmas on patrol with the Royal Navy’s submariners

This Christmas, a Royal Navy Trident submarine will be quietly prowling the seas as part of the Continuous At Sea Deterrent mission. She will have slipped out of HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland in late August. Her location is a secret, known only to a handful of officers aboard. Even the highest ranks of

Is a Russian threat floating off the English coast?

It is a little unsettling that the merchant ship MV Ruby is anchored off Margate, carrying 20,000 tonnes of Russian ammonium nitrate. This is seven times the amount of ammonium nitrate that caused the Beirut explosion in 2020, which killed 218 people and injured 6,000. While ammonium nitrate is usually sold as plant fertiliser, it can also

How did the superyacht Bayesian sink?

On Monday morning at 5 a.m. the superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily, leaving one man dead and six people missing. Among the unaccounted for are the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who had been enjoying a celebratory cruise after a US jury acquitted him of fraud charges in June, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.

The Titan deaths were utterly avoidable 

When the news broke that the Titan submersible was missing, naval experts immediately recognised that the chances of saving the lives of those on board were, realistically, tantamount to non-existent.  With rare agreement, they swiftly concluded that the kindest outcome for the five passengers would be that the submersible had imploded.  Hard-hearted as this may

There’s still little hope that the Titan will be found

The thought of laying eyes on the wreck of Titanic has tantalised the world since the ship’s rediscovery in 1985. Now the five people aboard the submersible Titan, currently lost in the Atlantic, will almost undoubtedly end up paying the ultimate price for their desire to see the sunken liner on the ocean floor.   Superpowers spend billions, largely