In The Navy

Photo by easylocum

When I was in my late teens, I ran away to join the Navy.

Well, okay, I didn't run away. But it sounds more romantic than "I filled in an application form".

I went as far as having a rather bizarre medical for them. I'm not sure whether hopping the circumference of the room while completely naked was standard procedure, or was just for the amusement of the male doctor and female nurse.

My application was not to be - perhaps telling the Navy that I was a member of Greenpeace set off alarm bells for them. But I've had a soft spot for the Senior Service ever since, while my feelings for the army and air force are, at best, "meh".

In the early 90s I visited Plymouth naval base for one of the Navy's open days. You were allowed to crawl over ships from a lot of countries, and what struck you most was that they all looked the bloody same! A Dutch destroyer looked the same as an Australian destroyer, which looked the same as a British destroyer. I remember thinking back then that all the world's navies could save themselves a small fortune by just buying a job lot of grey warships and divvying them up amongst themselves.

The one ship which stuck out was the biggest in the port - the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. I got to stand at the top of the take-off ramp and wonder what it would be like to fly a Harrier off the end of it. But I was also wondering what the damn thing was for. It was just under a decade since the Falklands War, but already the world was changing. The big draw at that year's Navy Days was supposed to be a Soviet ship, but the week before they suddenly discovered that the Soviet Union didn't exist any more.

The news in Scotland over the weekend was dominated by aircraft carriers. The Royal Navy wants two new ones, and has signed contracts to have them built. The new UK government aren't so sure they're value for money.

And I have to admit I kind of agree with them. When I look at the video animations of the new carriers, my heart beats at the shiny. My head, on the other hand, wonders whether a 20th Century way of projecting power is really what is needed in the 21st Century.

Their cancellation, we are told, would devastate the Scottish shipyards, so all the political party leaders are trying to come up with a joint strategy to fight for their retention.

They should also be coming up with a strategy for re-tooling the shipyards should the orders be cancelled. The Wall Street Journal reports that the offshore wind industry is being strangled at birth through lack of resources. Surely it would be better to retool the shipyards and retain the engineering skills, rather than wait for the Navy's next order?

Another thing that has puzzled me has been the harping from the sidelines that the First Minister, Alex Salmond, is not the best person to be leading the fightback. Caron, for example, has said twice in the last few days that

it's ironic to see an SNP First Minister who wouldn't be building any aircraft carriers in an independent Scotland

Well, of course he wouldn't. Most countries around the world manage to survive quite happily without aircraft carriers. What would Scotland actually do with an aircraft carrier?

Come to think of it, what does the UK actually do with their aircraft carriers?

In a world where an entire country can be brought to its knees by a few computer hackers, surely a Navy is about protecting home waters against the infidels rather than projecting overwhelming force on the colonies?

That's something a Scottish Navy, built on the Clyde, could do easily. Hey, we might even specialise in building boil-in-the-bag warships for every other navy in the world.