OT: Japanese Combined Fleet
 

Has anyone noticed the recent multiplication of Japanese aircraft carriers, they now have seven carriers built or building. The 27,000 ton Izumo is termed a helicopter destroyer by the Japanese, and is about as big as a WW2 Essex Class carrier. And everyone worried about China having one carrier!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izumo-c...pter_destroyer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hy%C5%A...pter_destroyer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cs...k_landing_ship

Excellent. More demand for Australia's iron ore exports. Keep building, Japan!

As Targan noted, win-win for both the Aussies and Japanese in that case. :D

But seriously, this shouldn't be a surprise. Japan's been looking west at it's old rival China and noticing how much their military spending has quadrupled over the decades, and now the Chinese are making a lot of noise about the Spratly Islands and the two China Seas (South and East), among other things.

Not to mention Abe's revisionist view of history re WW2 war crimes/attrocities, and the near removal of WW2 history from their school ciriculum from what I heard last year from a japanese backpacker/tourist.

I think it's a direct response to the exponential growth and modernization of the PLN. DPRNK saber rattling also probably has a little something to do with it.

The 'Self Defense' portion of there military's name is getting lip service at this point, particularly due to the fact there not sure how much support there going to get from the US if things went south in Asia. There absolutely committed to being able to take care of affairs in there own waters. Its just gotten important recently due to the island dispute there having with China, and a long standing one with Russia over islands to Japans north. The next several years will be interesting I think when it comes to Asian Naval Development. China and Japan are both somewhat conventional, Taiwan is the ringer in the corner and North and South Korea have there own games going on that affect everyone in the region. And that's not including the fun to the south involving China, Philippines, and Vietnam.

Basically another Balkans scenario that's brewing, only there's more water involved.

I think it's worth noting that, technically anyway, the JSDF carriers are meant to carry mainly helos, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have an issue carrying VTOL aircraft either. I believe there was a thread somewhere discussing how much redesign it would theoretically take to make a JSDF carrier capable of launching aircraft.