As far as I am aware, the Australian Royal navy won't be operating any f-35B's on their Canberra class.
When I excluded Australia, I do not mean in the technical sense but in the geographic sense.
Geographically speaking, Australia is quite removed from the South China Sea (SCS), so geopolitically speaking, the most immediately affected by China will be Viet Nam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan.
That does not mean Australia will be immune from any economic hardships created by a China controlled SCS or that Australia cannot contribute to deter that possibility. What I am saying is that the current SCS situation demands constant vigilance and presence of arms, and that a stronger Asian naval power like Japan is of a greater necessity than the same need from Australia.
The Japanese will be operating up to 40 f-35B's On their 2 Izumo class and they also have 2 Hyuga class DDH's. Australia has 2 Canberra class AAS and they won't be operating any F-35B's on them.
https://www.afr.com/news/politics/p...ietly-sunk-by-defence-20150707-gi6qxj?stb=twt
The Japanese also operate a large land based fixed-wing aircraft fleet, while Australia has none. Japan also has a larger maritime helicopter fleet than Australia be quite a margin.
Here is what Japan have done for the Izumo class...
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201802230054.html
“It is only reasonable to design (the Izumo) with the prospect of possible changes of the circumstances in the decades ahead,” a then MSDF executive told The Asahi Shimbun. “We viewed that whether the Izumo should be actually refitted could be decided by the government.”
I have worked with the Japanese when I was active duty. In peacetime, there is something calls TDY (temporary duty) that everyone in the USAF looks forward to. We have a chance to see other countries, experience other cultures, and relate to men and women that we shares a common bond -- military service.
Never mind what that Indonesian idiot implied about the Japanese. The Japanese are not stupid. They knew what they wanted for the Izumo. The interior of that ship was
ALREADY designed for the F-35. People focused on the surface issues like the lack of a ramp and whether the deck paint can handle the F-35B's hot exhaust, so they missed the more subtle point of what JPN have been planning all these yrs.
Qualitatively speaking, the JPNese navy, forget the 'Self Defense' label, is higher than the PLAN. The JPNese navy have been keeping up with US on the technology front for as long as the alliance have been around.
Ever since the Izumo's construction, experts both in and outside Japan have pointed out the possibility of turning it into a full-fledged aircraft carrier.
However, the Defense Ministry publicly denied any plan to deploy fighter jets with strike capabilities on the Izumo and contended that it was not an aircraft carrier.
The ministry has since done an abrupt about-face and now is mulling the possibility of refitting the vessel into an aircraft carrier.
Of course the Defense will publicly deny the Izumo was designed as a full fledged 'aircraft carrier'. But the technical aspects of the ship and the experience of observers cannot be denied of what the Izumo really is -- a genuine aircraft carrier. Putting on a ramp and reinforcing the deck for temperature rating is technologically easy for the JPNese, no matter how much JPN haters may bark about those two items.
Japan will be the strongest in the region (unless we count the Us Navy), in the future China could surpass them.
Even if China surpassed JPN in terms of naval power in the SCS, that does not mean JPN cannot be a military thorn and prickly enough to prevent the SCS from falling into China's hand.
Naval battles are not the same as land battles. Sailors do not fight each other like soldiers do. On the waters, who wins depends equally on technology as well as how good are the sailors know of their ships. You are deterred if you perceive the other side to be as good as you are.