Well this is one story i certainly wasn’t expecting to report on, ever! It turns out that just before xmas 2013, a fully armed Russian warship calmly approached the Scottish coast and came to rest 30 miles off the Inverness coastline.
This prompted the higher ups down in London to send an RAF reconnaissance flight and the images that came back caused much concern. They showed a Russian ship fully loaded with top of the range missiles!
Now, the UK is and island, and one would expect there would be many ships available to act as a defense under such circumstances. However, due to cuts, the only ship available to respond was HMS Destroyer. The only problem was that HMS Destroyer is based in Portsmouth, 600 miles away, and it took the Royal Navy 24 hrs to respond to the Russian threat.
On arrival, HMS Destroyer exchanged radio messages with the Russian vessel, and before long the Russians about turned and set sail.
Talk about a projection of force. And if Putin was testing the UK defenses in the North Sea, i think this response time would’ve surprised even him.
