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.
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.
In light of this development, we’ve spoken to experts involved with the planning consultation. Bryan Robertson, an 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.”
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.
Congratulations, and thank you for reading the whole article; this is just an April Fools Day joke. The article above is not true, and if anyone is sharing it after April 1st, please remind them of that fact.
The purpose of this article, aside from our usual April Fool’s Day joke, is to make the point that reading beyond the headline should be the norm every day, not just on the 1st of April. There’s a large volume of misinformation online. Make sure you don’t add to it by sharing articles without reading them. Finally, be careful of the person sharing this article after the 1st of April as they very clearly don’t read what they share.
We don’t have enough escorts, we will have to ask Luxembourg to lend us some of their frigates
And Russia can provide the submarines.
lend their tug boat
Can Russia provide Escorts?
Navel Escorts not Naval Escorts.
Not a bad idea. However unfortunately it is an April fool.
So I know that ukdj always does a great 1 April story. I knew that when I logged on but even so for just a second I thought “Could it just maybe be true?” Love your work!
Had this one before. Try harder.
Quite a few are reruns, but good for a chuckle.
DM, Just found this post from your/our old favourite Russkie sparring partner ‘JOHNINMK’ this from a site BFG/BOAR/RAFG Locations message board. Posted in 2023
I assume this is his spiel to establish his legend as it were. Did he ever employ it here?
My father was Wg Cdr C P Waddell, he was O/C Uedem from 1958 to 1961. He took my brother and I down the ‘hole’ as it was known.
We had a quarter on the base in Goch, Keppelner Strasse. Our neighbour was a Belgian Major.
Can’t remember going to Laarbruch for a swim but did have one in Munchen Gladbach. There was no functional link between Goch and Laarbruch.
We went to a party, I was 15, at the ‘house on the hill’ mentioned by busybiz, it was the quarter of an Air Commodore and as you might expect was large! Englishman at that time. We were in a Group Captain quarter, very nice.
Dad had an RAF VW Beetle as ‘company car’. I still have a couple of Jerry cans that he used to carry cheap BAOR petrol on our holiday trips to Italy.
We went to boarding school in the UK, flying out to Dusseldorf by BEA 3 times a year. Apart from the time we came back to the UK on a troop train and then the troop ship to Harwich mentioned by Histryman above. A pretty dire trip still etched in my memory.
Dad went on to RAF Leconfield and then to commission and command the new Marconi radar at RAF Bukit Gombah in Singapore.
Mate, yes, similar. I recall he outlined his Dads credentials in the RAF but prove his “Britishness” perhaps, but I don’t remember the exact details.
He’s still very active on the ‘Russian Defence Forum’ .
Just where he feels at home then😀
HDM – I might have fallen for this one if they said they were building a replacement for HMS Ocean! 😉
Hiya C. I was briefly intrigued by the LPD Scottish ferry one until I checked myself.
👌
if only 😉
but i do like the idea
Doh. Had me this one!
These April fools are getting a bit silly now for them to work they have to have some sensibility about them. Is this one they are going to be flying Harriers from.
They can’t get the first two right so this is 100% April the 1st and the name of the ship 🤷🏻♂️she will alway be going down
There was an excellent April fools on YouTube. Ed Nash on the Mig 31 Firefox. If someone wants a tongue in cheek laugh.
This is getting ridiculous now!! Just stop it!!
NOT FUNNY. We need more carriers. Don’t toy with us like that.
I don’t think we do, actually. Even if this were true I’d prefer they spend the money that a single QEC would cost on SSN, RFA, escorts.
If one is taken out, then we cannot field a carrier force for 50% of the year. We are on the very edge of viability with the force. The replacement carriers, whenever they may be, must increase in number. Same for SSNs, drydocks, destroyers, etc.
The blunt fact of the matter is that we don’t have enough of everything. Eventually we will have to bite the bullet and increase numbers, no matter how much the Thin Pinstriped Liners scream “fantasy fleet”.
Indeed, we are lacking in assets in most areas, which is exactly why I wouldn’t spend billions on a third carrier if the money ever became available.
Any new money on the carrier side of things should go on the airgroup, not the ships themselves, except the CIWS and cannons one seems to lack.
I think TPL talks a great deal of sense, personally, he doesn’t scream anything no more than anyone else who makes a counter point when posters want a BAOR of 4 Divisions back with the current costs involved in even fielding one.
I’d agree if he hadn’t needled people endlessly about how wrong they are, and then not accepted he was wrong over the ship-based anti-ship missiles issue… or the T31 frigates. Some of his followers on that site (like Fruitman) are also very wrong about certain things invovling anti-ship missiles. They always get a pass for some reason.
I followed him for a time, but I then realised it wasn’t quite as perfect as people were making out. I’m done feeling guilty just because he doesn’t like the twitter brigade. I’m tired of feeling that NavyLookout is completely wrong just because it doesn’t always agree with Humph.
If people want to call me a twitter keyboard warrior because of that, well, I don’t care anymore.
I fell for this reading – I thought WHY?? We have no escorts. Really only enough escorts for one. such as Lusty – It’s funny but no jokr.
No, we don’t.
We need more escorts – frigates, destroyers, SSNs, and F-35Bs, but not more carriers.
No point in additional carriers if we haven’t got enough aircraft to even operate off the current two.
My point is that in the long run (a century or so) we will need more of everything if tech remains similar (it did 1600-1850, so that future isn’t impossible).
(and yes, if tech changes then we need an increase in whatever equivalent platform there is then)
Don’t know about a 3rd carrier we could do with a helicopter assault ship though to replace ocean and Argos, along with a few more escorts.
“a helicopter assault ship” – absolutely!
This isn’t even funny, defence is in an absolute dire state and the situation is dangerous. Yet all I have seen today is defence media and official MOD accounts ! Making jokes about equipment procurement.
Shows you how pathetic we have become that this is considered an April fools joke. The only joke is how weak our military has become
Recycled joke from last year.April Fool supposed to be believable but a 3rd,aircraft and crew lite,mishap prone carrier??No thanks!!
We can hardly afford aircraft for the carriers we have. If i didn’t know any better i would say it’s another Boris Johnson vanity project.
For those of you who are fans of Tom Clancy’s first novel, there is a really good 1st April piece on the Naval News website. Or is it?
I saw that, made me laugh having watched The Hunt for Red October yesterday evening
A particularly tasteless joke.
Too soon?
Were it true, the first hurdle would have been manpowering it with the requisite presently non-existent seamen.
1st of April ha ha
Guffaw! That’s enough UKDJ; you’ve done enough today. What next, UK increases defence spending by 10% pa in real terms over the 10 years?? Gotcha!
The funny thing is when I have to look up information on the QE class, sometimes it offers the third carrier April Fool’s article from a few years ago as a source as part of the search engine summary. The AI is generating it as a factual source. lol
April 1st !!!
Will the propeller be rust proof!
“by Avril Fuller” …….. 😀
Sometimes I forget the day…
Oh what a chuckle. Go faster stripes indeed!
Lots of new posters appearing on this one pointing out how weak and crap the military is.
It’s almost as if they have an agenda?
Quit it with the April fools joke articles. One is enough
No, go away.
Morons. Stop being so stupid about them serious state of our woeful defence.
Why?
If we don’t laugh, we cry.
How can a RN ship be called Princess Diana ?? When no such person has existed officially She was Diana Princess of Wales NEVER Princess Diana. Proves Bullshit
I think you might have missed what date this article was published.
Bad excuse for click bait. Poor show people.
Do you genuinely not understand how April Fools Day works?
Clearly April fools. But, over fifty years, with what the UK Gov will ask from just two ships and required refits, maintenance eff cost, would a third lengthened QE carrier not be a cheaper option over half a century with one being in ordinary for periods? Who’s the fool?
Think that they done the same thing last year or the year before as it was on the front page of the Sun newspaper