A leaked consultation document appears to suggest that the Royal Navy will now order a third Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier in response to a resurgent Russia.

If you’re reading this please check the date above a this was an April Fools Day article and as such, is nonsense.

Sources in the MoD stress that the new ship, HMS Princess Diana, will incorporate lessons learned in the design and build stages of the first two vessels of the class. Queen Elizabeth was launched in 2014; Prince of Wales is due to join the fleet towards the end of the decade.

In light of this development, we’ve spoken experts involved with the planning consultation. Bryan Robertson, analyst at defence think tank DMCS (Daily Mail Comment Section), had this to say:

“Waste of funds & Human Life! One correctly placed Smart-Bomb will see Today’s heap of steel turn into Tomorrows heap of Scrap! H.M.S. Hood took the Ultimate Killing Shell way back in WW2 DESPITE AIRCRAFT; No Smart-Bombs then, and the Germans sent the Flagship of the Royal Navy to the bottom, no problem! What Government ‘FOOL’ proposed this latest Folly? Who is paying him? WE ARE. Such vast vessels have no place in modern times. Time for the OLD Timers to Grow UP!! Have they not heard of the Internet?”

The first two vessels will be completed in a Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing configuration, deploying the Lockheed Martin F-35B, while the third will feature six catapults and deploy “modern Harriers or something, or naval Typhoon”.  The third vessel will be 480 metres long and have an air group of up to infinity-hundred aircraft. The projected cost of the programme including the third ship is now £187.6 billion.

Excerpts from the leaked consultation document are extremely detailed in just what needs to be changed for the third vessel to be a “proper carrier”. Local park based defence analyst, Michael Greene, has recommended the following:

“The MORONS at the government should order aircraft or we’ll end up with an AIRCRAFTLESS carrier.”

In response to this, the Ministry of Defence are now considering purchasing the F-35B Lightning and other aircraft types. Other changes recommended by the experts consulted include stationing Trident missiles on the vessel, purchasing a fleet F-4 Phantoms, painting go faster stripes on the hull and additional crayon provision.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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136 COMMENTS

      • There is not going to be a 3rd Carrier. The rumour (and that is all it is) started because A magazine called UK Defence today published an article quoting leaked MoD documents on – wait for the date – 1st April 2018. Yes it was an April Fools joke.

      • There is a long history of Royal Navy warships being named after people: Nelson, Hood, Rodney, Anson, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Benbow, Boadicea, Duncan, etc, just as some shore establishments have been named after ‘things’ other than people: Ganges, Flying Fox, Eaglet, Seahawk, Dartmouth, Temeraire, Caledonia, Wildfire, Osprey, etc. there is no simple pattern to the naming process.

  4. plz tell me this is an april fools joke. need the 2 we got with full set of f35bs plus more escorts before thinking of a 3rd

  8. I heard from a very reputable source within the RAF yesterday that the MOD are looking at getting MD to build Harriers for them soon. It must be to equip the carriers.

    • fantasy, google amarg facility inventory, all our harriers are there and they’re in bits. the harrier will never fly from a royal navy ship.

  18. Why are we buying a load of troublesome aircraft from the USA when by now we could have designed and built our own? We have the brains in Britain maybe not now the production capacity? the other alternative is to build a through deck on these carriers and put fixed wing fighters and arrester gear on these new ships if they are supposedly bigger than the 1960’s Ark Royal carrier, which carried F4 Phantom Jets and Sea Vixen Jets? We would then be able to either convert existing British military aircraft or Buy off the shelf?

    • Because the Americans will have undoubtedly covered the majority of R&D costs and by buying a platform that they’re buying into on a much higher level, we can attain lower unit cost.

      • ‘hank the yank’ should be told to pu his act together and get our aircraft built. i’ve read somewhere that we’ve taken delivery of the 15th f 35. they’re at ffort worth. why aren’t they here? its like buying a car and being told to wait 12 months before you can drive it!

  23. if it wasn,t a joke it would have been in reality as we don,t have enough destroyers frigates to help protect them….i don,t know how they would protect 2 of them with what we have now…..once the worlds best navy cut down to nothing….talk about being a laughing stock of the world……

    • You are aware we don’t NEED to protect two of them, right? They’ll be rotating in and out of service in the same way as the Albion’s do, thus only the active carrier needs escorts. A third would just follow the same pattern, one deployed, one preparing to deploy, one in refit (of course, a third carrier would mean the navy’s budget just jumped by about £10-15bn, but details).

      The world’s largest navy back when we controlled a quarter of the planet. We lack those resources now, and no matter how much people like you gripe about it, that’s not going to change. The RN is still a top tier fleet with the capability to deploy anywhere on the planet; very few navies (the US, the French, on a lesser scale the Russians and Chinese) can actually do that. Be proud of what we have instead of crying about what we’ve lost

    • what the royal navy needs is 20 type 45 and 20 type 26 ,30 River-class patrol vessel the more ships the royal navy gets built in bulk the cheaper it is to order

      • Maybe the t45 and t26 but even the navy didn’t want the river class. The view has always been unlike the USA we can’t afford a high low mix. If we can only afford thirty frontline ships then they all need to be front line war fighters with full capability

  27. Had the French not pulled out there WOULD have been a third carrier [PA2] to operate in conjunction with the British, which would have kept two at sea instead of one. Bad decision, with the Charles de Gaulle nuclear carrier being the sole French carrier and of somewhat dubious reliability, 20,000tons less displacement than the CVF’s.

    • The French wanted a nuclear CATOBAR carrier, which obviously is not what the QEC ended up as. Adapting the design to their needs and then building it would’ve of been prohibitively expensive.

  28. more t45’s won’t happen buying one of the j.f.k or constellation(both in reserve at bremerton,would be a massive saving, catobar fitted (cheaper proven aircraft) super hornet.preferably, buy back the harrier for the q.e and p.o.w make the time build of the t26 an open fastest build, gets the next contract.refit a bay class as a dedicated hospital ship, get a ‘mates rate’ on a few of the decommissioning ticondaroga cruisers in service, so technologically up to date aegis system and tomahawk capable although they have aging hulls. hey presto bigger fleet, lots cheaper quickly available refit instead of build from scratch. just need more sailors offer old salts a return ticket, theres plenty who would take up the offer!

    • more t45’s won’t happen buying one of the j.f.k or constellation(both in reserve at bremerton,would be a massive saving, catobar fitted (cheaper proven aircraft) super hornet.preferably, buy back the harrier for the q.e and p.o.w make the time build of the t26 an open fastest build, gets the next contract.refit a bay class as a dedicated hospital ship, get a ‘mates rate’ on a few of the decommissioning ticondaroga cruisers in service, so technologically up to date aegis system and tomahawk capable although they have aging hulls. hey presto bigger fleet, lots cheaper quickly available refit instead of build from scratch. just need more sailors offer old salts a return ticket, theres plenty who would take up the offer! drag bristol into a yard and rebuild it from the inside out recomission illustrious to replace ocean. simples!!!

      • Building these carriers in the UK serves more purpose than just equipping the Royal Navy. It brings back to the UK the ability to build very large modern warships. The actuall build of the Q clas has been a huge learning curve for UK shipyards and has required a new approach not least being the creation of literallt thousands on new jobs through advanced apprenticeships. THe building of the ASTUTE Class Fleet submarines require a similar new approach. THe main reason why that program slipped was that the necessary skills were allowed to withrer on the vine. BAE took over the probgram and created new skills. THe result is that with Rolls_Royce [the main nuclear engine contractors] is that there is now a new generation of shipbuilders and NUCLEAR ENGINEERS be4ing created. .

  31. Post Brexit Britain will need to be a maritime power as Britain always was in the past – no empire doesn’t mean no trade or no threat. Britain is an island, and will be great again, inspite of the naysayer out there

  32. I’d like a bet albeit a very small one that the eventual aircraft compliment on THREE ‘QE’ Class carriers [a third carrier is being seriously considered and from the lessons learnt by building the QE and the Princeof Wales will allow it to be brought in cheaper, quicker and better less than half the time and two thirds of the cost] will include the F35 Lightning 2 AND the J39 SAAB [NT] Sea Gripen [lookit up on google!] The Sea Gripen developement team has already been embedded in the UK’s Ministry of Defence. As BAE [British Aerospace and Egineering] was involved in the original developement of the J39 Gripen [which incidently was the first FOURTH/Fifth generation of fighter aircraft to become operational in the world – the USA and Russia doesn;’t have it all their own way!!]. Tech, reliability, initial costs [less than half and maybe just ONE THIRD of the cost of the J35 and importantly probaly the cheapest flying and maintainence cost of any modern fighter, seaborne or not flying costs and service specs make the Sea Gripen in most major ways an ideal lightweight seaborn fighter. . It has avionics at least on a par with the F35 and can take off from the slope [with in one version a full war load if ‘rocket’ assisted] without major mods except for a simple arrester gear. Whilst it does have reasonable ‘stealth’ properties it is not as stealthy as the F35. However and thios also applies to the F22 Raptor, when fully loaded much of that load is carried externally negating much of the stealth m[the F22 has EXTERNAL hard points to carry up to FIFTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS OF STORES. On the J39 plus side it can and has carried and fired [the first combat aircraft to do so] the UK/French ‘METEOR’ ram air to air missileand a compliment of up to four ‘Paveways’ or 8 ”Hellfire” type or the advanced BAE versions precision weapon.

    • ESPECIALLY AT 3 TIMES THE COST, MORE WASTE WE DO NOT NEED A THIRD CARRIER FOR THE r.n IS THE MOST STUPID IDEA OF THE YEAR. IF YOU GOOGLE F 22 JUMP JET VIDEO, YOU’LL SEE THERE WAS AN VTOL ALTERNATIVE TO THE F 35B. IF EITHER Q.E OR P.O.W ARE DOCKED WHILE THE OTHER IS OPERATIONAL, WHY BUILD TWO IN THE FIRST PLACE

    • Folks, this story is FAKE! I’ve heard the real story. Apparently the Brazilian Navy has a helicopter carrier that we are going to buy second hand and convert to F-35B operations. Apparently the MoD got a job lot of oven gloves from a closing down sale that will be stuck to the deck to give the required heat proofing and also to provide some nice floral patterns to brighten things up a bit.

  35. HMS Princess Diana…nope

    Its of course going to be HMS MASSIVE and its going to be the first of the new Ginaggerous class of RN carriers.

  40. Well it needs fusion reactors, a force field, warp drive, photon torpedos & phasers. Perhaps due next April 1st?

  41. HMG have been playing April Fool with all of us for years by claiming we meet the 2% GDP military spending threashold when we haven’t.

    I’d rather we had an adequate number of escorts & invest in the manning needed than another carrier.

  42. I’d be pissed off if this was true. For the money I’d want us to purchase escorts. We have our 2 CVF we don’t need more.

    • the ticondaroga cruisers being retired could be worth a look at. with one retiring every year, other than the big crew sizes they’d be ideal for carrier escort, the job they were designed and have been used to do. the british stubburness for not buying second hand warships(even though everybody else does) buying our t 23’s from chile could work, also the two type 22’s still in service withbrazil and romania might be worth a punt. the t22 was designed to be upgradable to destroyer. withdrawal of the class was on a par with the cancellations of the proposed numbers of t45’s, t26’s.the nations navy has been kicked around too often

    • Because the carriers make potential enemies of ours sitting ducks.

      Merlin. F35. CBG T45 and T26. Astute. Viper. Sea Ceptor.

    • Aircraft Carriers today are not meant for full naval engagements at sea. They are meant to provide stand off air cover to land forces. This use of them was a lesson learned from the South Atlantic in 1982.

  44. HMS FITTED FOR – A splendidly apt name then all can fantasise about how we want her kitted out whilst the MOD wax lyrical about the potency of the ‘new’ RN with its 24 F35’s spread over 3 Carriers. Pintles for gimpys optional of course!
    One thing that will be never be extinct in this country is the white elephant!

  45. I know this is an april fools joke but it would be stupendously brilliant if the UK could get a 3rd QE carrier and then enough subs and frigate/s destroyers to protect them.
    We would really be going somewhere in terms of defence capability then.
    QE class- best value strike carrier in the world.

  46. HMS Princess Diana.. That would not of been approved by the Queen or sit well with her I promise you that, sooner give her a heat attack.. “Why that god awful women would get any ship named after her and bigger than mine I bloody don’t think so.” lol

    • Don’t worry it is an invalid name in any case. She never was Princess Diana. That title was never granted. Her full and correct title was ‘Diana Princess of Wales’. She was never permitted to use the JRH prefix.

  47. call the t 31 the admiral class.blake, russel, anson,cochrane, gibraltar and h.m.s port stanley base one at gibraltar.

  49. What? April 1st already? Or is this just a shopping list put together by Lockheed Martin to flog a few more carrier-borne AWACS, CODS, etc?

    Where are the destroyers, frigates, subs, tankers, etc to enable a proper carrier strike group? By the time any task group like this got close enough to a target, the bad guys would pick them off with medium-range missiles……

  50. Trouble with our Country we need to be shot at 1st We are never Ready to face the Enemy . y not it bee 1st and be Ready Cos its coming Trust me its we got to be Ready for it. am going to stick my neck out here, There are people in this country what like Knocking this great country down. them same people who thing is a waste of money to build warships will be the 1st to ask when the Russian Navy enters portsmouth where was the Royal navy well cos of people like you we never hard a big navy cos you stop it saying waste of money So i ask you want to sleep safe at night or in the end watch the Russian navy sale up.i no what i want go on a War Footing for we are a small country more is Safe’ty and great news people Trying to join the navy is up by 60%.

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