Gavin's Ceptic Discharge

Something called Gavin has been flapping its adolescent genitalia at a roomful of senior navy figures, some of whom may possibly have seen worse. The navy's defensive missile system, which was named the Sea Wolf by a native speaker of Standard English, is to be replaced with Gavin's new toy, which has been named the Sea Ceptor by a native speaker of Whitehall rah-and-blah. The new system is designed to deter attack by Russia and other potential rivals, such as Russia. Gavin noted that Russia has increased its submarine activity in the Atlantic and has approached Britannic waters thirty-three rimes in the past year, compared with only a single time in 2010. This shows the increasingly aggressive assertiveness of Russia, and has nothing whatever to do with the increasingly whiny weakness and isolation of the newly-independent Recrudescent Imperium. Gavin also plans to send some frigates to the Gulf next year, because in a time of unprecedented uncertainty (far more uncertain than the Cold War, the World Wars, the Cuban crisis or the last time Gavin tidied his bedroom, for instance) there are few things more stabilising than a frigate or two, provided they happen not to be from Russia, or partially manufactured in Russia, or designed in Russia, or traced to Russia by a reliable source such as Boris Johnson. In a previous adventure, Gavin has expressed the wish that Russia would go away and shut up, but as of the present instalment it remains unclear whether Russia has properly absorbed the boy hero's ticking-off.