Anyone want to buy an Aircraft Carrier?

[Big Brother]

Several months ago, the Brazilian government sold off it's long-serving Aircraft Carrier, the Minas Gerais (formerly HMS Vengeance of the British Royal Navy), to a private scrap dealer. The scrap dealer decided the ship was in too good a condition to break up just to make several billion razor blades. So, he offered it for sale on eBay. Bidding there got up to 4 million UK pounds before someone pointed out that eBay does not allow any form of "ordnance" to be sold on their site, and while the actual AA gun mounts have been removed from the carrier, as a still-functional warship, it indeed counts as a weapons system. The owners of eBay thus shut down the auction before anyone could buy the carrier.

However, the carrier is still up for sale online, it just moved to a site dedicated to selling yachts. The price is only up to $6.4 Million.

www.yachtworld.com/core/listing/pl_boat_detail.jsp?currency=USD&units=Feet&checked_boats=1169128

Amusingly, the site offers a "ship it now" (I can't imagine what FedEx would charge) button, and apparently also asks potential buyers if they already have a boat trailer to carry thier purchase away. At nearly 700 feet long, that would have to be SOME trailer.

Hmmm...J.K. Rowling has, what, pushing a billion bucks now, thanks to the sucess of her books and spin-off merchandise? Think a group of particularly manic Potter fans could convince her to spend a tiny fraction of her fortune to bankroll us in buying the carrier, fitting it out with some planes, picking up some black-market bombs and missiles, and then knocking over some small country without much of a military? Say, Brunei, for example? Small, oil-rich, run by a hereditary absolute monarch with not even a thin veneer of democracy...we could liberate it in the name of the Brunei people, grab a couple billion bucks from the Swiss Bank Accounts of the Sultan (last I heard, he was worth something like $13 billion), pay back Jo Rowling with interest, and re-name the country "The Republic of Pottermania"?

Then, with our own mercenary fleet, we can either become modern-day pirates or knock over some other small country and begin our long-range plan to conquer the whole world!

Sound like a plan, anyone?

[Lorpius Prime]

You've really set your heart on this one, haven't you Mart?

Hehe, I'll put in $20 toward buying the thing, anyone else?

[Kiv]

Why purchase a British Aircraft Carrier when with a little research you could find someone willing to sell you a Russian Nuclear submarine!

[Big Brother]

Because the only way we'd be able to recoup the costs of buying and outfitting a warship, much less the operating expenses, would be to take over some small nation. Subs tend to be notso-hotso when it comes to projecting power over land. Carriers are best for that, especially if we can get our hands on some aircraft and ordnance. With a few helicopters we could even use it as an amphibious assault ship. Subs, aside from cruise missile strikes (SLCM's are expensive and unlikely to end up on the black market) and SEAL team insertions (if we go that route, why bother with a warship when a largish yacht would do as well), are not great for invading a country.

An alternative to actual conquest of a nation would be piracy, which a sub WOULD be somewhat good for. Better than a carrier for evading pursuit, anyways. But piracy is even less tolerated than a coup attempt these days.

[Lorpius Prime]

I wonder if a SEAL team would cost less than an aircraft carrier