Sunday 17 July 2011

The Knock-Off Navy

Australian Navy personnel, serving in the middle east, have been issued with uniforms bearing a misspelled badge. Yes, out there, they're the Royal Australlian Navy. According to Arbroath, the uniforms were supplied to a Tasmanian firm, 'Badger Makes Badges', of Hobart, which outsourced the badges, it seems,  to Hong-Kong.
(for the geographically challenged, Tasmania is an island on the south-east of Australia, and is Australian, whereas Hong-Kong is part of China.)
Anyway, this apparition of a knock-off navy, looking almost, but not quite the real thing, led me to consider a future possibility, registered here in this blog, and if it  becomes reality, Soubriquet expects a fee of 10% of the profits over the next hundred years.
Yes, here it is, The Knock-Off Navy. I suggest that China, which is currently building the world's biggest navy,  builds part of it as a hire fleet. Y'know, personnel badges all stuck on with velcro, ship's identity numbers all made of fridge-magnet material. That way, navally challenged countries, like britain, which only has about three ships left, could, at the drop of a hat, or, at least, a Visa card over the Knock-Off Navy's hire desk, rapidly have a fleet on the way to any bit of sea it chose. Like around the Falklands, perhaps. Last time we had to send a fleet there, we had to commandeer cruise ships and cargo vessels. We'd have to hire them from China too.
It thus becomes possible for, for instance, the Swiss Navy to fight a major engagement against, say, that of Hungary.  Both landlocked nations would not need to actually own a single ship, nor have a home port. And the Knock-Off Navy would supply both fleets.
Just don't forget to sign the damage waiver form.
Actually, in engagements solely between Knock-Off Navy ships, it wouldn't be necessary to destroy or sink opposing vessels.
Nerf missiles and torpedoes would suffice. After two direct hits, the ship would release a cloud of coloured smoke, rip off all its badges, and return to China.
(It would also help avoid confusion in signal interception, as all ships would be speaking chinese.)

Couldn't ever happen you say?
What about Halliburton? Blackwater? How much of current warfare is outsourced to people who are not actually government armed forces?

2 comments:

  1. Our ships are on loan from Mongolia.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I always wondered why they had those chrome badges on the stern, saying "Powered by Yak-Butter".

    Ah well, that's me back to my yurt. I might have to post a bit more mongolian music soon.

    ReplyDelete


Spam will be reported and swiftly deleted. I will put a curse upon you if you post spam links.