On 6 June 2005, the British Ministry of Defence announced that "Invincible" would be inactive until 2010 but available for reactivation at eighteen months' notice. She was decommissioned on 3 August 2005, twenty months after an extensive refit that had been intended to give her ten more years of service. succeeded her as the service's flagship. The Royal Navy maintained that "Invincible" could have been deployed had the need arisen and that Navy policy assumed she was still an active aircraft carrier. According to Jane's, however, "Invincible" had been stripped of some parts for her sister ships, so operational readiness would require not only eighteen months but also the replacement or removal of systems from those other ships.