New Baby Carrier
Japan has itself a new aircraft carrier. Well, an aircraft carrying destroyer, that is. And a pretty small one; full load 18000 tons, with a normal complement of 4 helicopters. Hyuga is slated to enter service in 2009. She kind of looks like a British Invincible class carrier, although without the ski-jump. I suspect that Hyuga is too small to operate the F-35B, although she and her sister may pave the way for larger future carriers. Hopefully her career will be more successful than that of previous hybrid carrier Hyugas…