Britain’s newest nuclear submarine runs aground

Britain’s newest nuclear submarine ran aground off a Scottish island yesterday, in an embarrassing blunder just days after the government announced sweeping cuts to the Royal Navy.

However, it was towed out to sea after spending the day stuck on a shingle bank.

HMS Astute – billed as the kingdom’s most powerful hunter-killer submarine – was towed free from rocks off the Isle of Skye at high tide.

The submarine was being towed out to spend the night in deeper waters. It will be examined for damage today.

“It is a continuous process of assessment of the situation,” a Royal Navy spokesman said.

The submarine will return to its Faslane base in western Scotland.

“Astute is the largest, most advanced and most formidable vessel of its kind ever operated by the Royal Navy,” the force says on its website.

“She incorporates the latest stealth technology combined with a world-beating sonar system and equipped with Spearfish torpedoes and state of the art Tomahawk land attack missiles to make her a supremely effective naval asset.

“Astute is designed to fulfil a range of key strategic and tactical roles including anti-ship and anti-submarine operations, surveillance and intelligence gathering and support for land forces.”

The defence ministry said there was no environmental damage after the rudder of the submarine got stuck on rocks near the Isle of Skye.

Tugboats were waiting until the next low tide to try to free the £3.5-billion- (€3.94-billion) sub, which only entered service in August, the ministry said.

Television footage showed the stranded vessel emitting clouds of steam and lying half submerged in a stretch of shallow water against a backdrop of dark green hills several hours after the incident.

The accident comes just days after the government announced sweeping cuts to Britain’s armed forces including the scrapping of the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal.

The BBC reported that one of the tugs – the one sent by the coastguard – was also set to be taken out of service in 2011 under the sweeping austerity measures announced on Wednesday by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Astute was named and launched by Prince Charles’s wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, in 2007 and was commissioned into the navy less than two months ago after intensive sea trials.

Weighing 7,800 tonnes and almost 100 metres long, it is equipped with special noise reduction technology enabling it to “operate covertly and remain undetected in almost all circumstances,” the ministry said.