We tend to think of navies as a military force that deploys on the high seas. The US not only uses its navy for ocean battles, but traditionally for troop transport to faraway wars before air travel. But how would a country house and train a navy without seaports? There are seven landlocked countries in the world that maintain navies as a separate branch of their military forces. The "how" behind those forces comes down to the fact that oceans aren't the only bodies of water in the world. But the "why" is way more interesting, and each country has their own story. Some are responding to real threats, and some are legacies of a complicated history. In the case of Laos, we don't know much about it at all, but I'm sure they have their reasons in their own cultural context. This video from Half as Interesting is a minute shorter than it looks, since an ad is at the end.
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Probably for the same reasons Kansas once had a navy airport, and why Idaho has a seagoing port. Who knows?
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Hey, here in Canada we have access to quite a substantial amount of coastline. Lots of cities to be support hubs for our Naval Vessels. So can someone explain to me why CALGARY, ALBERTA ... A landlocked city ... is the support hub for some of them?
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