A Navy reservist hired to evaluate OceanGate's sub said the risks outlined by company were 'sincere warnings,' but added he wouldn't be afraid to go down to the Titanic on the sub himself

• A US Navy reservist was independently hired as a consultant to evaluate OceanGate's Titan sub in 2021.
• He warned in a report obtained by Insider that risks outlined by OceanGate should be considered "sincere warnings."

Before OceanGate's doomed Titan submersible ever made its first manned dive down to the shipwreck site of the famed Titanic in the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean, a US Navy reservist was independently hired by a TV production company as a consultant to evaluate the deep-sea vessel.

The reservist, a current active-duty member of the Navy, warned in a four-page report in May 2021 that the risks outlined by OceanGate in the company's liability waiver "should be considered as sincere warnings of worst-case outcomes and not just legal jargon required for insurance purposes."

OceanGate required Titan passengers to sign a waiver that mentioned death several times, Insider has reported.

However, the consultant, Dan Miles, concluded in his report, obtained by Insider, that he "would have no reservation" taking the sub down to the Titanic, 12,500 feet below the ocean's surface.

"Based on the trust built through both communication and demonstration of operations during this visit, with the expectation that milestones are met as expected, and with careful regard for the various risks and abort criteria discussed herein, I would have no reservation taking this submarine to the proposed dive site," Miles wrote.

Last month, the tourist sub imploded on an expedition to the Titanic, killing OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush and all four other passengers on board the 21-foot vessel.

Miles, who enlisted in the Navy in 2001 and is now a command master chief, was hired at the time by Ping Pong Productions, the production company behind the Discovery Channel's "Expedition Unknown" TV show, to review the Titan.

The show's crew had planned to take the sub to the Titanic wreckage site in the summer of 2021 to film for a special episode but ultimately pulled out due to safety concerns following a rocky test dive plagued with mechanical and communications issues in Washington state's Puget Sound weeks earlier.

"We did pull out of our project with OceanGate out of concerns, not just in [Miles'] report, but our own experience up there with it" and the "experimental nature of the entire sub," Ping Pong Productions co-owner and CEO Brad Kuhlman told Insider.

Miles, who a Navy spokesman confirmed to Insider was a reservist from June 2018 to February 2023 before he returned to active duty, told Insider that he wrote the report for Ping Pong Productions "as a civilian consultant" and declined to comment further about it.

The Titan's hull was the 'most controversial' part of the sub

In his report, Miles wrote that he was given an operational demonstration of the Titan at OceanGate's offices in Everett, Washington, observed the performance of the vessel at about 520 feet below sea level, and had "unfettered access" to Rush "in his capacity as CEO of OceanGate, project engineer, and the submarine pilot."

"This was not a detailed engineering review, nor should my observations be construed as any sort of final certification of the craft," Miles noted in the report. "This is an experimental craft subject to engineering changes between now and the proposed time of use."

Miles wrote in the report that the "risk incurred" with the use of the vessel "is roughly comparable to that of a test pilot putting a new aircraft through its paces."

He called the sub's atypical carbon fiber and titanium pressure hull "the most innovative and the most controversial component of Titan."

Ever since the Titan went missing last month and was determined to have imploded, reports emerged that a slew of industry experts had flagged warnings and safety concerns about the vessel and its carbon-fiber-based hull.

The sub, which was designed to be steered using a video game controller, also never underwent a certification process, despite calls from experts to do so.

The Titan's hull "is the key factor that differentiates this craft from other deep submersibles," Miles explained in his report.

'There is no other craft like it'

"That said, there is no other craft like it, and so there is no certifying body that has the depth of knowledge to definitively certify that this specific design is rated to a given operating depth with a given mean time between failure," Miles wrote.

Additionally, he wrote, "There are well-founded engineering concerns that come with using composite materials in sea water over time at high pressure."

"There are also well-founded engineering controls, as well as some common sense, that have been implemented to identify and detect (with the intention to avoid) a catastrophic failure of the hull," Miles wrote.

Miles also wrote in his report that the sub "has an innovative system to detect the possibility of microfractures that could lead to failure of the composite material in real time."

The Titan's overall design and operation "is consistent with other crafts of its class," Miles wrote, but he warned that "it is made of experimental materials and intended to go where most other manned submersibles of its kind cannot."

"It is intended to operate at the edge of its design envelope," Miles wrote. "As a result, there is some amount of inherent risk that cannot be bought down."

"That said, each of the systems that I observed are consistent with the best-in-class that I have seen elsewhere and built on well-founded and long held experience in submarining," wrote Miles.

He added, "OceanGate personnel operated professionally, are knowledgeable, and demonstrated a culture of safety and introspection not normally demonstrated at this scale."