As a Gunner (RA) I was around when we changed in the early 1960s from yards (NOT equal to a metre!) and degrees, to metres and mils (6,400 in a circle, vs 360X60X60 seconds). The simplicity of the shell-lobbing arithmetic from that moment was wonderful.
Metres have a scientific basis as a measurement constant and navigation tool, just as knots do. Statute miles, yards, feet and inches are something to do with how Roman soldiers would yomp along and other measures that meant something 2,000 years ago, and they belong in that time.
I navigate my boat in knots/nautical miles, because I locate myself using latitude and longitude, and so does my GPS when it's not on some national grid or another. My aircraft, when I owned one, measured speed in knots so I navigated in nautical miles. If I'm using a map on land I navigate in metres/kilometres/kph because, in the UK and most other countries I plod around in, the grid and vertical measurements on the map are metric. And thank God for that.