The U.S. Navy has decided to assign a squadron of its most advanced fighter jets to its new Japan-based aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, aiming to counter China’s growing capabilities.
A squadron of the F-35C Lightning II will join Carrier Air Wing 5 in Iwakuni, Japan, the Navy said Monday. They will replace the F/A-18 Hornets that have long served as mainstay carrier-based fighters.
Carrier Air Wing 5 itself will move from the USS Ronald Reagan — which left Yokosuka for the final time this May — to the incoming George Washington when the latter arrives in Japan later this year.
The F-35C Lightning II is an F-35 variant designed specifically for aircraft carriers. It has the widest wingspan of any F-35 variant and is equipped with landing gear to catch the arrestor wire on the carrier deck. Folding wingtips save space so that more planes can fit on the vessel.
The move is a significant upgrade in capability and reflects an understanding that the Navy needs a fifth-generation aircraft to counter Chinese advances in stealth fighters, according to defense analysts.
The F-35s will be stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, in Yamaguchi prefecture, just south of Hiroshima, and will fly out to sea to join the George Washington when it is on mission.
“The F-35C’s superior networks and stealth capabilities cannot be obtained by any fourth-generation fighter, such as the F/A-18, no matter how much they are upgraded,” said Masashi Murano, a Japan Chair fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Murano told Nikkei Asia that the F-35C would not only give the Navy tactical advantages in air-to-air combat with China’s new fighters, but also be instrumental in responding to anti-ship ballistic missiles launched from the Chinese mainland and anti-ship cruise missiles launched from Chinese bombers.
“The priority of deploying a fifth-generation carrier-based fighter to Japan suggests that the competitive environment in the Western Pacific region demands higher network capability, penetration and lethality from the carrier-based aircraft,” he said.
A Navy spokesperson told Nikkei that there are currently F-35C squadrons on the carriers USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln. Both are San Diego-based carriers tasked with defending the Indo-Pacific.
Yokosuka, Japan, is the U.S. Navy’s largest overseas base and has around a dozen warships ported there. The Navy has only one aircraft carrier home-ported overseas at a time, serving as its main asset in Yokosuka.
The George Washington was the Navy’s forward-deployed carrier in Yokosuka from 2008 to 2015 and has been undergoing a multiyear overhaul, including to accommodate the F-35C.
The introduction of the F-35C squadron follows the announcement of similar upgrades in Japan by the U.S. Air Force, which will move 36 units of the F-15EX Eagle II fighter to Kadena Air Base, in Okinawa prefecture, and 48 units of the F-35A Lightning II fighter to Misawa Air Base, in Aomori prefecture.
