Blundering Russian state media has been ‘duped’ into falling for an April Fool’s joke that the Royal Navy is planning to build a third aircraft carrier called ‘HMS Prince Andrew’, which can carry an ‘infinite’ number of jets.
Russian channel RT ran the article headlined ‘Britain to expand navy due to Russian “threat”, following a satirical report by an online military news site.
As part of its annual April 1 tradition, UK Defence Journal claimed a ‘leaked’ Ministry of Defence document had revealed the UK was looking to buy a new supercarrier.
In a move the site said would have caught ‘seasoned defence watchers off guard’, it claimed the construction of the warship would cost a ‘modest £987.6billion’ – more than 18 times Britain’s £53.9billion defence budget for 2023/24.
‘Sources close to the Ministry stress that the new vessel, tentatively named HMS Andrew will build upon the experience gained from the design, construction, and operational lessons learned from its predecessors, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales,’ the article by ‘Avril Fuller’ read.
‘The Prince Andrew is projected to measure 480 metres in length and will be capable of deploying an estimated infinity-hundred aircraft – giving it a theoretical edge over any known carrier fleet in existence, real or imagined.’
Within hours of the story going live, RT – formerly Russia Today – had copied the fake report, writing up a genuine 132-word article about it, that has since been removed.
A former British spymaster has today declared the Russians have been left with ‘egg on their faces’ over the gaffe – and that there could have been many furious officials deep inside the Kremlin raging at the blunder.
Colonel Philip Ingram, a former military intelligence officer and Russia expert, told MailOnline: ‘When RT put the story out, I’m sure the Russian minister of defence would have sat down thinking “oh my gosh, how have we missed this?”.
‘It would have led to a flurry of questions to different Russian departments and possibly to the Russian embassy in the UK, demanding to know how they had missed this information.
‘I really hope it got to this stage and tied them up on something completely frivolous, drawing their attention away from real intelligence gathering.’
He said it probably wouldn’t have taken long for the Kremlin to realise they had been ‘duped’.
‘They now have egg on their face,’ added Col Ingram. ‘The vodka is on them today.
‘It’s brilliant that we have turned the “maskirovka” doctrine for masking deceptions online back on the Russians.’
Defence writer George Allison, who was behind the spoof article, said it had been so full of ‘absurd details’ like the ship having ‘go faster stripes’, that he was stunned it was taken as a legitimate news report.
‘It was meant to be obviously fake, and it was written to make people laugh,’ he said.
In a piece for the UK Defence Journal, he added the gag had exposed a secondary issue that was not a laughing matter.
‘We suspected that some outlets – particularly those eager to undermine the UK – might pick up the story without checking it properly,’ he said.
‘If they took it seriously, it would highlight a lack of basic editorial scrutiny. If they knew it was satire and published it anyway, it would say something more deliberate about their intent. Either outcome would be revealing.
‘That’s exactly what happened. A Russian state media outlet picked up the story and presented it as real. It’s easy to laugh, but it also points to something important: how easily disinformation or narrative-shaping content can spread when verification is skipped in favour of a message.’
Britain’s two carriers, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth, are the largest and most powerful ever built by the Royal Navy.
Together costing more than £6billion, they are capable of carrying dozens of F-35 stealth jets.
A defence source insisted there are ‘no plans’ to build a third Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier.
HMS Prince of Wales is due to deploy in the coming weeks to Asia as part of a major mission.
