Comment Re:China vs. NATO? (Re:Yeah right) (Score 1) 188
Blue Ridge carry up to six helicopters. They have hangar space for repair of up to two helicopters at a time. They are flattop warships. Helicopters very much are aircraft and form the primary offensive armament of the ship. They're literally based on the Iwo Jima-class carriers. Again, similar ships in literally any other navy than the USN are called carriers by the USN.
My point was that if you use the standards the US Navy uses to determine what is an aircraft carrier in other navies and apply that to the US, there are a bunch of ships that should be considered carriers. And, with little to no modifications, all those ships I listed can carry and launch F-35Bs. F-35Bs actually are STOVL and not VTOL with combat loads. They do require a flattop ship to sortie combat missions from. "Can launch fixed-wing multi-role fighters into combat" seems a reasonable standard to call something an aircraft carrier. Yes, there are a bunch of ships that were clearly built with the assumption of buying F-35Bs once those became available. Like the French Mistral and Japanese Izumo ships. I think Italy has a few "sea-control" ships that also fall under this. I have seen white papers on launching F-35s from every class of ship I mentioned. Will those work out in practice? Maybe? It will almost certainly require resurfacing the flight deck because the F-35B has a habit of burning holes in flight decks that aren't specifically reinforced to resist that. That's what happened to the America-class, which was even purpose built to launch F-35s. That's one reason (there are many) that the project is so behind schedule. (Aren't they all?)