Not Much Point In A Nuclear Submarine
Round and round the world it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows. Welcome to the submarine cycle, a non-stop underwater carousel where half-mad humans ride in the bellies of giant metal fish carrying atomic firecrackers. Nuclear subs -it’s a cliche-ridden netherworld of undersea tin-can cat-and-mouse, where everything’s for your eyes only and need-to-know. Except now the entire world knows Britain’s got only four big ones and our latest missile test went belly-up. Allegedly.
It’s a manic-depressive’s life in the modern Royal Navy. Aircraft carriers with no aircraft, minesweepers that crash into stationary objects, pirates giving you the finger. Sailors! Is your journey really necessary? But the quartet of iron whales that comprise our ‘independent nuclear deterrent’ is one of the many delights British tax-cattle get to pay for whether we like it or not.
So when comics as cheap as The Sun newspaper are printing the details of the Royal Navy’s latest soggy flop, you can bet your flippers the admirals are back at the doors of Parliament with their begging bowls. Last year’s Top Secret is this week’s front page for a reason -namely, the Navy is flat broke.
I’m no expert in the area of military budgets, just a sceptical observer, but I can’t help noticing how the armed forces get the same three headlines lined up in every single election year. For five decades we’ve been hearing: (1) Beware the Diabolical Threat from Evil Russia (2) Our Heroic Armed Forces Are Desperately Underfunded (3) Without Deadly New Weapons We’re Doomed.
You can see the angle. There was (once) a long-standing tradition that a bevvy of votes was there to be had for any political party patriotic enough to support Our Boys in Blue. Somewhere deep in the collective British mind lived a maritime race-memory which surfaced like a periscope whenever an election came chugging into view. It’s a result of living on an island; sooner or later everyone finds themselves at the coast watching some whacking great ship go by, a cheer goes up and then all the old lags start muttering about Francis Drake and Horatio Nelson.
These days, however, it won’t be the HMS Ark Royal churning the surf, flags flying and guns akimbo. Instead, what you’ll see on the crest of the ocean wave is a whacking great floating Holiday Inn full of retired swingers who can’t face life without five meals a day and the promise of an Abba tribute band.
Some rascally landlubbers would argue that high seas crammed with cruise ships instead of destroyers can only be progress. It’s not as if we’ve won any naval battles recently. With the odd exception, our surface-going vessels have been largely decorative since around 1960, when the real action moved underwater -as Hollywood never stops explaining in endless excruciating submarine movies, ping………….ping………..ping………..BOOOOOM!
So let’s take a deep dive (sorry, it’s infectious) into the whole business of hauling missiles around the ocean to keep the free world safe. Is there still any real point in this exercise or are Our Boys and the Ivans chasing each other’s tails between icebergs just to keep clapped-out actors in work?
There’s not much clarity as regards the specific threat posed by submarines in 2024. Precious few of us lie awake at night fretting that a gi-normous snub-nosed shark from Putin’s undersea arsenal is silently creeping up the channel to fire off a volley of nukelets at London Bridge. Given that our fearsome wave-warriors can’t seem to fend off an Afghani sex-pest in a rubber dinghy, the Navy is be unlikely to put much of a dent in an armour-plated atomic jumbo like the PrideofLeningrad. We just don’t believe it’s going to happen.
In essence, the subtext (sorry) is a credibility problem. Only yesterday a former Navy captain named Tom Sharpe let the cat out of the diplomatic bag on the pages of the Daily Telegraph. Bemoaning the chronic lack of investment in up-to-date submarine technology, Tom confessed: “the credibility of the deterrent, and therefore its pivotal role in the defence of NATO and the West, depends on whether or not you believe in it.” Quite so. Tom, by the way, wants you to know he captained four different Royal Navy warships, although he’s too shy to name them.
Times change, of course, and these days cap’n Tom is a humble PR hack who can get away with saying the quiet part out loud. He works for an outfit called Special Project Partners. And what do they do? I’m glad you asked, because the startlingly kinetic SPP website supplies the answer, right on the front page:
We Enhance, Protect and Defend the Most Complex Reputations.
How about that? I’ve been writing on and off thirty years and I never heard the phrase “complex reputation”. In my limited sphere, reputations have been well-earned or dreadful and even iffy, but complex? That’s a fine thing. As SPP kindly explain…
Agile and experienced, we combine communications, change management and data science expertise to enhance, improve or defend your reputation no matter how complex your organisation or situation. Specialists in short notice, international and challenging projects; our focus is your outcome.
Agile and experienced, eh? Sounds a bit like an athletic hooker, but what do I know?
Anyway, SPP is where this particular old sailor chose to bunk down and start scribbling. I doubt his bosses at Admiralty HQ would have been too pleased to read his brand of newfound wisdom in their morning paper back when he was still in uniform. But maybe that’s why he hung up his tricorn hat -who knows?
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?
Tom however, perhaps unconsciously, put his finger right on the button. The jolly old bang-bang boat only matters “so long as you believe in it”. It’s not exactly a secret that a great many_____________
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