China Releases Image Of Japanese Carrier Sailing Right Alongside Its Own Carrier
Japan’s use of its aircraft carrier to closely shadow China’s own is highly unusual.
Japan’s use of its aircraft carrier to closely shadow China’s own is highly unusual.
U.S. Marine Corps F-35 fighter jets are the first fixed-wing aircraft to fly from a Japanese warship since World War II.
Next week, F-35B stealth fighters are due to go aboard the newly modified Japanese carrier Izumo for the first time.
The leaked image sparked outlandish and baseless speculation that Japan is actually wanting to turn its two Izumo class helicopter carriers into full-on catapult and arresting gear-equipped aircraft carriers and buy F-35Cs to go with them.
The Japanese government has consistently and vehemently denied that its hulking helicopter carriers were built with tactical jets in mind.
Both countries are future F-35 operators and once Japan’s big “helicopter destroyers” emerged, fielding the F-35B seemed like just a matter of time.
The multi-national exercise had a strategic subtext of countering China’s growing naval might in the region.
Japan is deploying its newest and largest helicopter carrier, the still very new Izumo, to escort a US supply vessel from the waters off Tokyo into the Sea of Japan where it is supposedly tasked to rendezvous with the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group. At that time it is likely the Izumo will also join the growing armada of vessels exercising off the Korean Peninsula in an effort to put increasing pressure on North Korea and possibly to contain or respond to additional missile and nuclear tests ordered by the Kim regime.
Dispatching the helicopter carrier Izumo to the South China Sea is the largest naval show of force by Japan in the region since World War Two.