UK to build 3rd Aircraft Carrier, named "Prince Andrew"

Russian state media falls for April Fool's joke claiming Britain will build aircraft carrier called HMS Prince Andrew which can carry 'infinity' jets

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. 

Pictured is the spoof April Fool's article published by UK Defence Journal earlier this week 

Russian state media channel RT fell for an April Fool's gag which claimed the UK was building a third aircraft carrier called 'HMS Prince Andrew' capable of carrying an 'infinite' number of jets

A former British intelligence officer claimed the Kremlin be furious 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. 

Britain has just two aircraft carriers, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth (both seen at their home base in Portsmouth). There are no plans for a third carrier

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.' 

Commenting on RT's falling for the April Fool's, shadow armed forces minister, Mark Francois, said: 'Unlike Ian Fleming’s Commander James Bond, it would seem that none of the staff at Russia Today ever worked in naval intelligence. They are too busy trying to come up with ever more reasons to reject a ceasefire in Ukraine to spot the obviously spoof story right before their eyes.'

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. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14567659/Russian-state-media-falls-April-Fools-joke-claiming-Britain-build-aircraft-carrier-called-HMS-Prince-Andrew-carry-infinity-jets.html

Original Article:

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/uk-to-order-third-aircraft-carrier-due-to-russia-threat/

HMS Queen Elizabeth

Aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (pictured front) is the sister ship of HMS Prince of Wales (pictured rear) - with both the vessels based in Portsmouth

The Queen Elizabeth's sister carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, broke down near the Isle of Wight due to a faulty propeller shaft

In Scotland passing under the Forth Bridge

The £3bn 65,000-ton ship caught fire while docked at Glenmallan

No fatalities were reported after the vicious blaze

HMS Queen Elizabeth wasn't able to take part in the biggest NATO exercise since the Cold War due to issues with its propeller 

Engineers found a 'significant issue with her starboard propeller shaft' on the HMS Queen Elizabeth 

HMS Prince of Wales was scheduled to replace her

The £3.5bn aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth

Aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales 

The World's First Aircraft Carrier, British, during WW1, loaded with a biplane,and being towed behind another boat ahead of a launch

The plane would be launched by the towing vessel steering into the wind and speeding up until there was enough lift to get the plane airbourne

The pilot had just 58 feet of 'runway' to get the plane off the deck or it would plummet into the sea

The vessel's take-off ramp being constructed during the First World War

One of the first aircraft carriers in the world being used to launch planes. On landing the aircraft would be ditched and recovered from the water

Aircraft Carrier circa 1918

'Taking off on a torpedo attack'. It shows a torpedo on the undercarriage of a Blackburn B5 Baffin biplane circa 1936

A badly damaged biplane is recoverd to the deck of a ship. 

'Baffin landing off Alexandria' circa 1936, as the aircraft carrier Glorious roamed the Mediterranean Sea in the years preceding World War Two

HMS Glorious

The battlecruiser was repurposed as an aircraft carrier during the 1920s

A  Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber

A Blackburn B-5 Baffin biplane setting off on a torpedo run

Small Businesses Used as Fronts by Muslim Criminal Gangs

UK Police raided a string of Turkish barber shops and seized more than £500,000 in illegal cash during a crackdown on money laundering.

Officers smashed their way into the businesses, which are increasingly used as fronts by criminal gangs.

They seized more than £500,000 in cash and arrested seven people after swooping on 33 premises.

The raids were carried out by West Mercia Police, together with Trading Standards West Midlands Fire and Rescue, Immigration Enforcement and HMRC. 

They formed part of Operation Machinize - a crackdown on gangs using barber shops for fraud, money laundering and selling illicit goods.

More than over £6 million in criminal assets have been seized in the year it has been underway. 

It coincides with a broader crackdown by the National Crime Agency, which has overseen dozens of raids in recent months. 

More than 750 barbers opened in the UK last year despite a broader High Street downturn - raising suspicions that some are being used by gangs. 

Barber Hewa Rahimpur, 30, and his gang of fellow Iranian Kurds were detained on suspicion of bringing 10,000 migrants into Dover from the French coast in small boats

He is seen here being arrested by NCA officers in East London. He was later extradited to Belgium to face trial  

Sniffer dogs were brought along on the raids on the shops

Detective Inspector Dan Fenn, of West Mercia Police's Economic Crime team, said: 'Organised crime groups are opportunistic and exploit legitimate businesses, such as barbershops, to hide their illegal cash flow.

'The high cash turnover of these businesses makes them ideal for disguising illicit activities.

'Our work during Operation Machinize sends a clear message to these crime networks: we will not tolerate criminal activity in our communities.

'Following these warrants, 34 intelligence reports have been submitted, helping to build a stronger intelligence picture and supporting future operations.

'Community intelligence played a key role in this operation. Some of the information used to plan these raids came from public tip-offs.

'That local support is invaluable, and we encourage anyone with information about businesses involved in money laundering to report it.'

Drugs expert Gary Carroll, who spent more than 10 years in law enforcement and now gives court testimony on street drug gangs, recently revealed there was a 'copycat' aspect to the exploitation of the Turkish barber format by criminals. 

'It's a well trodden path that one crime group will just copy another when they see something is working,' he told MailOnline. 

Boss Crew Barbers in West London, whose owner was sentenced to 12 years last year for sending £11,000 to ISIS supporters in Syria

'And while we are increasingly moving away from cash as a society, barbers are still predominantly cash based - something they can get away with because the fees they charge are relatively low.

'Then there's the added attraction of this being an unregulated market that isn't monitored by any government body. So there's a lack of enforcement, without the one-off hygiene checks you'd get with food businesses.'

Shops marketing themselves as 'Turkish' barbers are often run by other nationalities, including Kurds and Albanians.

Even so, Mr Carroll drew a link between the rise of Turkish barber shops and the continuing popularity of heroin trafficked by gangs from the country and elsewhere in Asia.

'When we look at money laundering there's the well established affiliation with Turkish heroin, and the demand for that is certainly not decreasing in the UK,' he said.

Traditional Turkish-style barbers are known for stylish haircuts - usually completed with a hot towel and cut-throat razor.

But there have long been concerns about criminals infiltrating the trade.

In the UK barbers do not have to register as a business with Companies House, with the option to instead operate as a sole trader.

Barber Hewa Rahimpur, 30, was the lynchpin of a vast cross-Channel people smuggling operation 

Some shops also let individual chairs to hairdressers.

The arrest of people smuggler Hewa Rahimpur in 2022 was one of the early signs of the dark reality behind the barber shop boom. 

Rahimpur and his gang of fellow Iranian Kurds were detained on suspicion of bringing 10,000 migrants into Dover from the French coast on small boats.

The 30-year-old, who had arrived in the UK illegally and was granted asylum after claiming to have suffered 'political oppression' in his home country, was driving a top-of-the-range Mercedes when he was caught by police. 

His gang had netted £13million in cash from the crossings and it needed to be laundered somehow, so Rahimpur, a former barber, entered the hairstyling business a few years ago in Camden, North London.

He was extradited from the UK to stand trial in Belgium last year and is now serving an 11-year sentence for people-trafficking.

In a second high-profile trial, 33-year-old Afghani Gul Wali Jabarkhel was accused of using his barber shop in Colindale, North London, as a base for a smuggling racket in which he tried to recruit lorry drivers to bring migrants to the UK hidden in their cargo.

After realising police were watching him, in 2020 Jabarkhel fled to Kabul, Afghanistan. 

Jabarkhel was convicted alongside three others after a trial two years ago at Kingston Crown Court for his role in what the NCA described as a 'ruthless operation when human beings were little more than goods to profit from'.

Some salons have also been linked to terrorism, with Tarek Namouz, proprietor of West London hairdresser Boss Crew Barbers, sentenced to 12 years last year for sending £11,000 to Syria to 'purchase weapons and explosives' to use against President Assad's government forces.

The barber, who lived above his salon in Hammersmith, boasted to a prison visitor while on remand awaiting trial that he had actually managed to send £25,000 to the ISIS supporters that he was financing.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14563135/Turkish-barber-shops-police-crackdown-Cops-raid-dozens.html

Tarek Namouz boasted to a prison visitor while on remand awaiting trial that he had managed to send £25,000 to the ISIS supporters that he was financing

Albanian Gul Wali Jabarkhel, 33, used his barber shop in Colindale, North London, as a base for a smuggling racket