The Pretend Navy

People often say that joining the military is character- building and enables one to acquire skills, and it's also an employer of last resort to some. At the same time it can involve getting seriously killed or injured and doing the same to others. The naval forces of some countries are also quite limited because they're landlocked, so whereas it's presumably relatively easy to enroll in the army or air force of such countries, the opportunity to join the navy would be relatively limited. Also, there can be quite exacting physical health requirements for such things, such as not being colourblind. It's notable, moreover, that the drier a territory and the further from the sea or ocean it is, the less likely it is to have use for ships and to some extent the more likely it is to have deserts or other barren areas.

Enter the Pretend Navy. A fleet of ships, and yes I do mean proper warships with guns and stuff, way out in the wilderness, including sandy deserts where possible. The youth of today join up, are shipped out to the, well, ships, where they live life on board doing all the usual military stuff as done in peacetime, maintaining the ships, learning skills, swabbing the decks or whatever else it is sailors do on ships nowadays. This will have the same character-building and skill-training effect as the real navy, but for countries where they haven't got any water, and it will also be somewhat harder to wage war, meaning that a large military presence in the nation concerned needn't be a belligerent presence looking for somewhere to aim their cannons, and it'll also employ people. You can either join up for a couple of years or have a career.

Also, there should be a Martian Navy one day but we're not ready for that yet.