Carrier Costs Rise To Accommodate Aircraft Britain Can’t Afford

Well, admirals can have dreams too, you know

The costs of the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers currently under construction have risen by at least £1bn, the Ministry of Defence admitted today, taking into account the major redesign work needed for the Joint Strike Fighter that Britain can’t afford to buy.

“This is an unforeseen additional cost which has only arisen because the plane we originally designed the carriers around has never worked, can’t work and will never work,” confessed Admiral John Byng. “Consequently we’re having to redesign the flight decks to launch and land the version of the plane that can and indeed does apparently work. Unfortunately, that’s the one that needs a bloody long flight deck, because the VTOL version we based the entire project around will keep burning sodding great holes in the deck, and once it does get airborne it has to land immediately because it’s just used up all of its fuel taking off.”

“Not that it matters,” he chuckled, “Because even the basic bread-and-butter model is so extravagantly expensive that we had to choose between the planes or the carriers, and for strategic reasons we chose the carriers because that means more sailors for us to give orders to. Of course, now we can’t even afford both carriers, so we’re putting one of them on eBay, BNIB. Somebody’s going to pick up a real bargain, because we’re starting the bids at 1p to take advantage of eBay’s cheaper listing policy. You see, contrary to popular opinion, us chaps at the MoD really do have the taxpayer’s interests at heart.”

So far, however, ministry sources have been unable to confirm whether the bargain-basement carrier on offer will be capable of handling real aircraft or imaginary ones.