Posted on 12/17/2018 10:59:27 PM PST by BenLurkin
In its 10-year Defense Program Guidelines, Tokyo said it will buy 42 of the stealthy F-35Bs, which are designed for short-run take offs and vertical landings.
Those planes will be available for deployment aboard two flat-top ships, the JS Izumo and JS Kaga, which at more than 800 feet long and displacing 27,000 tons are the largest ships in the Japanese fleet.
The Izumo and Kaga have been carrying helicopters designed for anti-submarine warfare since entering service over the past three years. They will need to have their decks reinforced to accommodate the heavier F-35Bs, as well as the heat and force from the jets' thrusters when they land vertically.
Japan will also increase its order for F-35A jets, which take off and land on conventional runways, to 105, the government said. Forty-two of those jets are in service or were part of earlier Japanese orders. Those planes will replace the Japan Air Self-Defense Force's aging F-15J fighters.
The purchases will be spread over 10 years, with 27 of the F-35As and 18 of the F-35Bs to be acquired, as well as the two warships to be refitted, in the first five years.
Total spending over the first five years is pegged at $282.4 billion and will include creating cyber defense and naval transportation units that operate across Japan's three military branches, the Ground, Air and Maritime Self-Defense Forces.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Given all the Chinese saber-rattling and the availability of the F-35B, this was bound to be Japan’s next step in naval defense.
“However Wallace and Schuster both cautioned that the Japanese carriers are small and cannot carry many aircraft — especially compared to the US Navy’s massive 90,000-ton Nimitz-class carriers or even China’s 58,000-ton Liaoning carrier.
For comic relief, the Japanese call that a “helicopter destroyer”.
It’s about the size of and close to the displacement of an Essex class carrier.
Diesel or nuclear?
It’s about half the size of a Chinese carrier. But I would keep in mind, this thing is probably Lexus quality and far exceeds the Chinese effort.
China will improve in time and should not be completely scoffed at, but the Japanese will build a far superior flat top.
Gas turbine. Japan has this hangup about nuclear. It’s been a real mixed bag for them.
I thought it’d be that. Those ships look pretty small.
Snooze. Wake me up when they have kamikazes again.
You can bet that they haven’t forgotten how to build a real carrier. Plus they will have learned from the mistakes the last time. Let’s hope that they are always a good ally.
Odd. We call our small ones helicopter carriers.
They’ll do it better for half price.
Yes, the next Japanese carriers will be in the 60K tons range.
[Snooze. Wake me up when they have kamikazes again.]
Carriers be they USA, Japan, or Chinese are formidable instruments to project force at distance in conventional warfare. In total conflict between nuclear forces theirs as ours are dead meat. If they can be seen from space they will die from space or rockets launched from surface ships or land. If you can see them you can kill them be it theirs our ours if you go nuclear.
The real ships of total destruction are our “boomers” Each one of the subs has the capability of destroying any nation as a functioning society. We have many. Oddly the purpose of our boomers is the supposition that we receive a first strike that takes out our missiles and aircraft for a counter strike. They might get our aircraft, they will not get all our hardened missiles in silos. Even if they did achieve this unlikely act, our boomers would destroy them.
Boomers are the ultimate weapon of destruction. From the depths of the arctic, the Atlantic and Pacific lurk total destruction for any nation that attacks us. Even if these boomers are attacked by hunter killer subs they would need to take every damn one of them out in a coordinated attack on our missiles and land based aircraft to avoid total destruction. Our enemies do not have this capability. If our boomers started dying we would launch our land based missiles and aircraft.
In a war of threats that the Chinese prefer (See the Philippines) these will be a deterrent. Especially if they build more than 2. Japan’s big problem is birthrate. You can’t really have 70 year-old pilots
Still quite small by carrier standards, but a start at least.
One loose end that perhaps someone could pin down would be the relationship between regular pilots and kamikazes. There had been scattered suicide attacks earlier in the war before the kamikaze program got rolling; some of these were pilots with crippled planes trying to make it count, and some were apparently prompted by an excess of bushido. My impression, however, is that for the most part, the kamikazes were mostly new pilots, sketchily trained. From a command perspective, I would think Japan would have tried to conserve its dwindling pool of good pilots and would not have thrown them away on kamikaze runs.
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