This friend of mine is a defence contractor.  Don’t actually know what he does (because it’s all secret stuff), but he was up in Hamburg the other week working on the electronics of the one of new Bundesmarine frigates and he came back with this story.

In a neighbouring dry-dock, there’s another military vessel undergoing a re-fit. He wasn’t sure whether it was Swedish or Norwegian – somewhere further north anyway – and it had these unusual markings on the superstructure.

He reckoned they looked like those newfangled QR barcodes, but figured it had to be some sort of stealth camouflage.

He got chatting to one of the guys working on it and mentioned the unusual patterns and said he’d not seen anything like that in the way of camouflage before.

“Oh, it’s not camouflage” this other guy said ‘They really ARE barcodes – it’s all to do with logistics”

“Logistics?!” says my mate “I thought I’d seen everything, but LOGISTICS?! Seriously?

“Yep” said the engineer ” It’s so that they can Scandinavian….”

[Edited to accommodate eponymous geriatric cousins who are a bit slow]

“Scandinavian?’ says my mate.

“Bloody hell” says the engineer ” When the vessel returns to port, they scan the barcode – scan the navy in. Get it now….?”