Russian state media outlet RT published a story about the British Navy launching a ‘HMS Prince Andrew’ – not realising it was an April Fools’ joke.
On April 1, a satirical article was published by the UK Defence Journal which claimed the navy was building a new supercarrier that could carry “infinity-hundred’ aircraft and would be named after Prince Andrew.
The obviously tongue-in-cheek article said the carrier would be armed with Cold War-era Harriers or “naval Typhoons” launched via six catapults, and cost the taxpayer a modest £987.6 billion.
The piece also quoted a pretend expert from the ‘Daily Mail Comment Section’ think tank.
However, the joke article was picked up by Russian state media outlet RT who lifted lines from the piece and presented them as fact.
RT, formerly Russia Today, cited the UK Defence Journal as its source and ran the article with the title ‘Britain to Expand Navy due to ‘Russian Threat.”
It is unclear whether the state-funded outlet deliberately misconstrued the article or genuinely thought it was a real news story.
The author of the original joke piece George Allison said “As part of our usual April Fools’ Day tradition, we published a clearly satirical piece about a fictional third aircraft carrier—HMS Prince Andrew—complete with absurd details like ‘go faster stripes’ and ‘crayons’. It was meant to be obviously fake, and it was written to make people laugh.”
However, Allison said the intention of the piece was also to see if outlets “eager to undermine the UK” would pick up the story without fact checking it.
He continued: “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.”
For the avoidance of doubt, the British Navy has no plans to build a third Queen Elizabeth-class carrier, and there are certainly no plans to name one after Prince Andrew.
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