A recent article published by Plymouth Plus, titled “Disaster as broken £1 billion nuclear submarine arrives in Plymouth,” has raised significant questions within defence circles for its handling of unverified claims, lack of transparent sourcing, and quiet edits made after publication.

The report, which implies that the Royal Navy’s HMS Astute suffered a potentially crippling reactor issue, cites only a single unnamed “defence source” and includes no corroboration from officials, contractors, or independent experts.

While anonymity in sourcing is not unusual — especially in defence reporting — it is the combination of unattributed claims, visibly reused social media content, and factually incorrect details that has led to a growing number of concerns about how this story was assembled and presented.

The article’s central allegations — that HMS Astute was towed into Devonport covertly with serious technical faults, possibly a poisoned nuclear reactor, and had her armaments removed beforehand — are serious and newsworthy. But the framing, timing, and language of the piece closely mirror a social media post shared hours before publication. That post originated from an account with no known ties to the defence community or any verifiable expertise in the field.