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HMS Ocean is due to be decommissioned in 2018
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that it is considering selling the Royal Navy's flagship HMS Ocean to another government, following reports the Plymouth-based warship could be snapped up by Brazil.
It's been reported that Brazillan naval chiefs are keen to buy the 21,500 tonne vessel, based HM Naval Base Devonport, after she is decommissioned by the Royal Navy next year.
According to Brazilian media, government officials said they believe the asking price, which has not been disclosed, is "reasonable" and that they were looking at the possible purchase "with cautious optimism".
The Ministry of Defence said a "number of options are being considered", adding that selling the vessel to another government was a possibility.
The news comes just months after the light aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, affectionately known as Lusty, was sold by the MoD to a recycling centre in Turkey for just £2million.
HMS Ocean is an amphibious aircraft carrier
In November 2015, the MoD confirmed HMS Ocean will be decommissioned in 2018 - despite undergoing a £65million refit in 2014- as part of cost saving measures with no like-for-like replacement.
Her sale would mean the Royal Navy would be left without an aircraft carrier until the new HMS Queen Elizabeth becomes operational in 2023.
The decision to decommission the amphibious helicopter carrier, which recently returned to Plymouth following a seven month tour in the Mediterranean and the Gulf, has been widely criticised.
In November former defence chief Lord Michael Boyce said retiring the Royal Navy's flagship "makes no strategic sense at all" and was being done because the military is "badly underfunded"
Lord Boyce, an independent crossbencher who served as chief of the defence staff from 2001 to 2003, said the cash squeeze was forcing the services to have to make cuts of 10 per cent, which was having a negative impact on both training and the lives of personnel.
She's been in service for 20 years
Concerns were also raised in the House of Lords by former head of the Navy and Labour peer, Lord Alan West of Spithead.
Lord West argued it represented "yet again another cut" to the Senior Service.
Given the current "highly dangerous" state of the world, the peer urged the Government to put HMS Ocean in reserve until the two new aircraft carriers became operational.
However, defence minister Earl Howe rejected claims of naval cutbacks and argued the service was "very much on the up".
Lord Boyce did not find the minister's response "particularly convincing".
He said: "Would the minister agree that paying off Ocean makes no strategic sense at all?
"And it has been done because actually defence – despite what the minister has just said – is at the moment badly underfunded.
"And in the RAF's case it is badly under-resourced in people, as well."
http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/roy...0258949-detail/story.html#I3byXZehEVR66xVe.99
