Hyuga is unlikely to use the F-35B in the future as she is too small.
The F-35B requires either 167 m from flat deck or 137 m if the ship has a ski jump.
Hyuga is 195 m long, but tapers forward at the bow – this would need to be extended. She is not fitted with a jet blast deflector, so could only launch one F-35B at a time – followed by a spotting the second and so on. Not very conductive to high intensity takeoff operations.
She would also definitely lack the space to be conduct simultaneous landings and takeoffs.
The F-35B wingspan is 10.64 m (non-folding) and 15.5 m long. At best the Hyuga is 33 m wide – and the deck tapers at the bow. To tight a fit for to use the flight deck as a parking space for the F-35B.
The elevators are optomised for operating helicopters – they are in the middle of the flight deck: http://www.nikkei.co.jp/news/main/imimage/im20070823STXKE04932308200713.jpg
As above, the elevators need to be 10.7 wide x 15.6 m long (at least!). According to:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/japan/ddh-x-schem.htm
They are 13 m wide and 20 m long – large enough for the F-35B.
The hanger is probably too small, especially if the attachment in the first couple of pages is correct (aft elevator is in the wrong place!).
D K Brown (UK naval architect) mentions that, once the helicopters reach 6, the most efficient deck design is the ‘through-deck’.
I remember when the Osumi commissioned the AV-8B rumours started – there is insufficient room between the island and the edge of the flight deck!
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