Armed ForcesSeparated from Brunswick by hilly, wooded country and the once impenetrable Laithby Marishes, Arransia has always looked outwards towards the sea rather than to her neighbour. The country has a strong maritime tradition and historically has regarded the Navy as the main bulwark of her defence. While they have often been outnumbered, and not always had the most modern ships at their disposal, the Arransian Navy have usually given a good account of themselves whenever faced with anything like reasonable odds, although it must be said that many of what are seen as their most glorious moments have been heroic but doomed fights against vastly superior forces. In contrast, while the courage of the individual Arransian soldier cannot be doubted, they have over the years been very poorly served by their generals, and Arransia’s military history contains an embarrassing number of defeats by supposedly inferior forces. One exception to this was the “Blue and Green Division” which fought on the Eastern Front during the Great War, under Mayonnaise command, and were regarded as probably the finest fighting force on either side. Eventually, with the collapse of the Eastern Front, they were left in a very difficult situation and many were held in detention camps for years before returning to their homeland, where they found they were not given the recognition they felt they deserved. Ormond may have been a demagogue, but he was not a dictator, and even during the Great War Arransia never had formal military conscription, although there was a system of direction of labour which had much the same effect, giving those who declined military service the option of doing backbreaking manual labour. An objection to compulsory labour is harder to sustain than one to compulsory soldiering. Even in the darkest days of the war, when ships were being sunk every month, the Navy managed to be entirely manned by volunteers. The Treaty of Ynysforgan which brought the war between Brunswick and Arransia to an end in May 1949 was in many respects fairly lenient to Arransia, as Brunswick wanted to cultivate her as an ally in the post-war world. In particular, Arransia was allowed to keep all of her overseas colonies and all of the naval vessels the Brunswickians had not already sunk. However, Brunswick insisted on severe limitations on the size and composition of Arransian land forces to ensure there was no possible future risk of invasion. Recognising that the top brass of the Army had been very close to the discredited Ormond government, the new coalition under Hector Wolfenden (1880-1956) took the bold step of deciding to disband the Army altogether, and to incorporate the sections that were to be retained in the future into the Marine Corps under the overall control of the Navy. (Arransia had never had an independent Air Force.) This arrangement has continued until the present day, and Arransia is unique amongst major countries in having in effect a single armed service, under the control of the Admiral of the Fleet, although containing substantial land-based Marine and Naval Air Service detachments. Currently, the total personnel strength of the Navy is about 70,000, of whom 28,000 are in the seagoing fleet, 24,000 in the Marines and 18,000 in the Naval Air Service. The present holder of the rank of Admiral of the Fleet is Philip Leslie (b 1951), the 17th Earl of Howick. There is a strong tradition of naval officers’ careers running in families, and there are several Scullions, Brodies and Astleys in the officer corps even today. The day-to-day activities of the Navy are subject to much less political control than in many other countries and the Admiral of the Fleet is arguably the second most powerful person in the country. Full equality for women in all disciplines apart from front-line combat troops and submariners has applied since 1993, and women now serve as commanders of frigates and RNAS squadrons. Beadnell in Byrness is considered the home of the Arransian Navy, but there is also a major base at Skerne in Teviot, and the fishery protection force operates out of Lemingore in Edirn. Beadnell has a superb enclosed harbour created by the building of breakwaters in the 1930s. The naval dockyards have extensive repair facilities, but new warship construction has always been undertaken by private shipyards. Since the war, there has in general been close co-operation between the leaders of the Brunswick and Arransian armed forces, and a good working relationship has been established, with close co-ordination of military planning. This is despite the fact that political relationships have sometimes been strained. In effect, the Arransian Navy is seen as a specialist force concentrating on rapid reaction and amphibious operations. This is in line with what the Arransians find congenial and generally works well, although some Arransian politicians feel that in a genuine conflict situation the Brunswickians might expect them to undertake missions they felt were unacceptably risky for their own forces. Some may find it ironic that in recent years the Arransian Marine Corps have proved surprisingly effective as League of Nations peacekeepers in a variety of troublespots. In the 1950s, Patrick Scullion’s government repeatedly asked Brunswick to supply Arransia with nuclear weapons, a request that was always refused. This became less of an issue later, and indeed in the 1970s George Rostron would occasionally claim that Arransia’s lack of nuclear weapons gave the country a certain moral superiority, which Scullion not surprisingly described as making a virtue out of necessity. Arransia’s sole civil nuclear reactor uses entirely Brunswickian technology and the country has never seriously considered attempting to develop nuclear weapons independently, a brief investigation in the 1950s finding the cost prohibitive. In terms of military equipment, the postwar period has been one of feast then famine. During the 1950s, the armed forces were largely re-equipped with hardware from Brunswick, much of it either supplied at a discounted price or effectively given away. In the 1960s, there was much less need for new acquisitions, while the 1970s recession and the pacific policy of the Rostron government caused replacement decisions to be further postponed. Since 1981, while more funds have been available, they have still not been sufficient to buy anything near what the Navy wanted, and the result is that a lot of hardware dating back to the 1950s is still in operation. This includes, very strikingly, the R-16 four-engined flying boats based at Skelwick Firth which continue to handle Arransia’s coastal reconnaissance and search and rescue operations. These were somewhat old-fashioned in appearance even when built in 1959-60, but are still valued by the RNAS for their endurance and ability to linger over a location. Indeed in 1998 a pair of them successfully flew to the Southern Ocean to assist in dealing with anti-whaling protests. There are also a couple of squadrons of the B-39 Vulture delta-winged long-range bombers of the same vintage, but as Brunswick still makes extensive use of these (and indeed has never managed to develop anything to fully replace them) they do not stand out so much, and there is a strong camaraderie between both countries’ B-39 crews. The most obvious manifestation of vintage military hardware is the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Margaret, which was laid down by Brunswick in 1947 as the Hornet and is thus approaching her sixtieth birthday. After the war, Brunswick had proposed transferring to Arransia one of their smaller aircraft carriers that were already in service, but the Arransians spotted the half-completed Hornet, which Brunswick planned to scrap on the stocks, and decided that was what they wanted. After lengthy negotiations, Brunswick eventually agreed, and the 36,000-ton ship was eventually completed and officially taken over by Arransia in 1954. She immediately became flagship of the Arransian navy and rapidly assumed the position of something of a national talisman. In the 1970s, plans to replace her were rebuffed by the Rostron government, who seemed happy to lose Arransia’s naval aviation capability in the fullness of time. Realising that they had to make do with what they had, in the early 1980s the Navy carried out a major reconstruction which was intended to prolong the ship’s effective life until 2000. This included a substantial extension of the flight deck area, and by this time the standard displacement had risen to 44,000 tons. The result was very impressive in appearance and the ship was depicted on the new $10 note issued in 1987. The picture on the note is a pilot's eye view approaching the flight deck on landing. Her two Brunswickian sisters, the Ranger and the Wasp, were scrapped in the 1980s, and the Arransians salvaged as many components and spare parts as they could to keep the “Queen Maggie” in service. The ship remains fully operational in the mid-2000s, and in 2003-04 undertook an extensive world cruise which was the subject of a television documentary series. This made something of a star of the lugubrious Engineer Commander Archibald McGrath, who kept warning the captain that the ship’s elderly engines and boilers might not stand whatever they were being called upon to do, although in practice they always did. In fact, at one point an average speed of 26.4 knots was achieved during a 24-hour full-power trial, which is quite an achievement for a ship of that vintage, and resulted in a brief glimmer of self-satisfaction crossing McGrath’s face before he ordered his hard-pressed subordinates to undertake the necessary safety checks and minor running repairs. Towards the end of this cruise the ship gained international notice through assisting very effectively in relief operations following a devastating tropical tsunami. Options have been investigated for a joint carrier design that would be built for both Brunswick and Arransia, but it is unlikely that this would enter service before 2015, and so the Queen Margaret is likely to have to soldier on until approaching her seventieth birthday. There are pockets of modernity, though. Arransia has the capability to build all her own warships (and indeed could in theory build a 45,000-ton aircraft carrier) and apart from the Queen Margaret there are now no ships in active service dating back from before the late 1960s. During the 1990s the Navy acquired a 17,000-ton helicopter-carrying assault ship, HMS Sealion, and a pair of what are generally reckoned as very impressive 7,500-ton guided missile destroyers, HMS Brodie and HMS Scullion, which accompanied the Queen Margaret on her world cruise. More recently, in 2004, Arransia took delivery of a fleet of six long-range heavy lift aircraft of a type similar to the C-17 Globemaster, which replaced elderly turboprop freighters and greatly enhanced the Marine Corps' rapid reaction capabilities. It is clear that the replacement of some of Arransia's elderly military hardware cannot be deferred too much longer, despite the strenuous efforts made to keep it in service. This particularly applies to the Vulture bombers and the Queen Margaret, and it is likely that this issue, and the potential cost, will be at the forefront of Arransian politics for the next few years. In fact, following the 2006 General Election, the new Labour government firmly grasped these particular nettles. Arransia agreed to participate in the Brunswickian programme to "remanufacture" the B-39 bombers, initially contracting for 14 of the 22 to be converted. A contract was signed with the Brunswickians to develop a new model of patrol flying boat, the R-25, in a programme involving an unprecedented degree of management control by the Arransian aerospace industry, and which would see the final assembly of the planes carried out in Arransia. Most important of all, following a year of detailed design work, in November 2007 a formal announcement was made of the ordering of a replacement aircraft carrier, the Leviathan, which would be built at Cairds' shipyard at Elswick and was planned to enter service in 2014. This would be about the same size as the Queen Margaret but far better optimised for 21st-century warfare, in particular in supporting combined operations. While Arransians have a strong sense of pride in their Navy, the country, as mentioned above, has never had formal conscription and has always resisted any form of military influence on civilian life. The military do their job and keep themselves to themselves. Arransians are happy to work as part of a team, but very unwilling to accept orders unquestioningly, which is what makes them much better sailors than soldiers. "This isn’t the bloody army, you know!" is a favourite Arransian riposte when arbitrarily told to do something - particularly apposite as Arransia has no army as such. Patrick Scullion is the only senior military officer to become Chancellor in Arransia’s entire history, and this was far more due to his talents as a politician than the fact that he was a naval hero. Although briefly commissioned as a full Admiral in 1949, after he became Minister of Defence he was very rarely seen wearing naval uniform and always insisted on being referred to as Mr Scullion. In Arransia, the various armed forces are always referred to as the Royal Navy, Royal Marine Corps and Royal Naval Air Service, which is sometimes seen as presumptious by other countries. If given a national prefix, the preferred style is "Arransian Royal Navy", not "Royal Arransian Navy". If you are interested in naval history, you might like to take a look at the following pages: Arransian Royal Navy Fleet List Biography of Admiral John Brodie
|