Japan launched a twenty-seven-thousand ton “destroyer” (the Izumo, DDH 183) on August 6th that looks exactly like an aircraft carrier. Actually it looks like an LPH (Landing Platform Helicopter) an amphibious ship type that first appeared in the 1950s. LPHs had no (or relatively few) landing craft but did carry a thousand or more troops who were moved ashore using the dozen or more helicopters carried. The first American LPH (the USS Iwo Jima) was an eighteen-thousand-four-hundred ton ship that entered service in 1961, and carried two-thousand troops and twenty-five helicopters. Until Izumo showed up, several nations operated LPHs, and...