Tim O’Neill is Campaign Lead for Subsea Intelligence at BAE Systems Digital Intelligence. He previously spent five years with Ultra and L3H working on anti-submarine warfare sonar, torpedo defence, mine warfare and autonomous surface vehicles. Before moving into industry, Tim served for 16 years in the Royal Navy, qualifying as a Warfare Officer and later as a Mine Clearance Diving Officer and Principal Warfare Officer. His sea appointments included HMS Invincible, HMS Walney, HMS Ramsey and HMS Daring, with deployments to the Persian Gulf, Baltic and Mediterranean, including operations alongside NATO task groups and US Navy carrier strike groups. He later served as Chief of Staff to a Mine Warfare Squadron and as Principal Warfare Officer on the UK two-star Maritime Battlestaff.
Cables cut in the Baltic, Russian ships over UK pipelines. The underwater battlespace is back, writes Tim O'Neill of BAE Systems, and subsea communications are the weak link.