Setting aside the possibility of some horrendous apocalyptic accident, which does take the funny edge off a bit, there is something undeniably comic about but the two nuclear subs in mid-Atlantic.
All the gags have been done about the stealth technology being just a bit too good and of course the obvious danger of the French Triomphant being on the same side of the road as the British Vanguard. So I won't re-visit that now.
But surprisingly nobody seems to have asked the obvious question - what the fuck are these submarines for in the first place ?
The usual arguments about the wonderfully benign roles of military forces in the new world order just don't apply to these levithans :
They can't act as a peace keeping force in regions beset by civil war, they can't deliver humanitarian aid in the even of catastrophe, they can't keep the sea-lanes safe from piracy, they can't conduct a surgical-like regime change, and I even doubt they deter 'rogue states' run by religious mentalists.
But they do apparently cost something like £5 billion each.
All the gags have been done about the stealth technology being just a bit too good and of course the obvious danger of the French Triomphant being on the same side of the road as the British Vanguard. So I won't re-visit that now.
But surprisingly nobody seems to have asked the obvious question - what the fuck are these submarines for in the first place ?
The usual arguments about the wonderfully benign roles of military forces in the new world order just don't apply to these levithans :
They can't act as a peace keeping force in regions beset by civil war, they can't deliver humanitarian aid in the even of catastrophe, they can't keep the sea-lanes safe from piracy, they can't conduct a surgical-like regime change, and I even doubt they deter 'rogue states' run by religious mentalists.
But they do apparently cost something like £5 billion each.
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