British Aircraft Carrier For Sale On Auction Site

Hugh Pickens writes "Time Magazine reports that just in time for the holidays, the British Navy has put the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible up for sale on an eBay-like website. The proud 690-foot warship sailed Her Majesty's seas from 1980 to 2005, and took part in the Falklands, Balkans and Iraq campaigns. The ship underwent a major refit in 2004 but was decommissioned in 2005 with the proviso that she could be 'reactivated' at 18 months notice if a crisis beckoned but over the years her engines, pumps and gear boxes were cannibalized for use in other ships. If interested go to the auction site and put her to your 'wish list,' or add her to your 'cart.' Interestingly enough, the Australian government had originally planned to purchase the ship in 1982 but the Falklands war intervened and in July 1982 the British Ministry of Defence announced that it had withdrawn its offer to sell Invincible and that it would maintain a three-carrier force."

Re:WOOOOO!

[santax]

Blame amazon for those 2 steps!

An odd object...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Obviously, anything made of that much steel, and capable of being tugged where you want it, has a floor value as a substantial amount of quality scrap; but I have to wonder if it has much more than that. Given its age and poor condition, refitting it will be fairly expensive and require some expertise. It also presumably lacks any refinements made in carrier design in the past 20-30 years.

Unlike, say, low end armored vehicles, for which there is always demand because even tinpot dictators have even more tinpot rebels to crush with them, aircraft carriers are sort of a "superpower or nothing" weapon. Unless you have the cash to maintain one, the air force to be worth projecting into blue water, and the support/defense/meat-shield carrier group ships to protect the thing, it is nearly useless to you. I would assume, therefore, that your standard "diamond/oil/cocaine/etc. kingpin who buys weapons because his country is a shithole with no internal industry" is basically off the table, unlike the case of some APCs or crates of RPGs or such. On the other hand, even if the ship is actually a good deal for some developing wannabe power, enough military procurement decisions are made as pork/spoils/makework deals that support for just buying the thing, rather than having some native shipyard build one, would seem doubtful, unless a country simply has no such capabilities.

Can anyone think of a buyer, without invoking Snow Crash?