Again you bring Jet Blast Deflectors into the argument when you know they are not required for the F-35B. No carrier designed or intended to operate the 'B has them nor are there any plans to retrofit them. Japan cannot 'hold Daddy's hand' forever, they have to stand on their own two feet and they realise this for the longer term. In the Asia Pacific region they all tend to play the long game. These ships aren't 'mini carriers' at 27000 tonnes and 800+feet long they are definitely in the mid range and on a par with WW2 Fleet Carriers. They may only operate a single sqn of F-35Bs but 12 of them are more than a match for the 24 or so J-15s from a Chinese carrier, and still carry enough weapons to strike the PLAN CVBG.
Seem to have hit a nerve, OK to make amends for sake of argument I am talking rubbish and we'll do things as outlined by you, which is essentially give the Izumo a LHA-06 make over no ski jumps JBDs and other crap.
The USS America spent 40 weeks getting it's work done, essentially bracing and heat proofing the deck clearing away ariels etc for a clear flight path because the F35B is much bigger than the AV8's.
Let's be generous and say the Japanese can do it a couple weeks quicker so say 38 weeks, so if the ship goes in tomorrow by around Thanksgiving it's out again.
The Izumos have cut aways to the deck at the bow so can't use a straight runway on the port side like on the USN LHAs, as we're not going with a Ski jump pointless rebuilding the bow it will just add time which apparently isn't available, but no worry we'll just paint an angled path on the deck for take offs like in the good old days not optimal but it works
We'll get around the aircraft problem the Japanese will order a bunch and the Marines, Italians or Brits will donate some of their active ones and replace them with the Japanese ordered ones when they come off the production line and we'll do the same for munitions, 38 weeks is more than ample for a new spray job with red roundels
So we have a ship and some planes what next, oh training, so obviously have to get some help from the US Navy again, the Cavour and QE are probably available but they have ski jumps so not ideal, we'll send a couple of dozen of Japan's best and brightest pilots off to get to grips with at sea ops on whatever the yanks will let them use.
We got the ship, some planes and the personel so the Izumo is ready to go out again as we're in a rush say a week for a shake down cruise a week to fix any thing that comes out of it before we embark the air wing.
So shortly before Christmas 2018 it's nominally ready, yippee we've done it in record time. It's dangerous times that's why we're in a rush so prudent not to have both Izumos in refit at the same time after all those pesky chicoms have subs as well cold war russian and knock off chinese ones but they might get a lucky shot in you never know better safe than sorry, so we'll do the next one in 2019. So we're ready well no one's taken off or landed from the ship yet but that's just detail, deterrence that's what it's all about, we've shown them!
On the other side of the sea, the Chinese with their Soviet era rust bucket and knock off Russian cold war planes have just been twiddling their thumbs avoiding a scrap so dispirited by the activity in Japan, they haven't really bothered training much or getting ready even though they have a couple of squadrons of planes, a carrier in the water and another fitting out, because the spanking new, battle ready Japanese CBG is here! After all there's not a lot of point really they won't see those F35's coming because they're invisible and those Japanese pilots with half a year's training by the yanks are lethal, might as well hide and just stay in port.
And that's how it's done! Happier now? Did I miss something could it be done even quicker have I padded the numbers?
But in the real world may be instead of getting hot under the collar you may care to meet me half way a say it's not a walk in the park and it might take a couple or three years to do things properly in order to actually have something that might be a counter to what the Chinese have in the water already, or you could just sit back and utter to**er at your screen as you read this, just covering my bases
