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USS Tripoli Amphibious Assault Ship Enhances Indo‑Pacific Airpower With F‑35B Night Operations.
The USS Tripoli conducted night F-35B operations in the 7th Fleet area of operations on November 29, 2025, underscoring its new role as an aviation-centered platform in the Indo-Pacific. The flights signal a broader shift in how the Navy projects airpower forward, especially as Tripoli completes its move to a Japan-based posture.
On November 29, 2025, night flight operations from the USS Tripoli (LHA 7) in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations highlighted how a forward-deployed amphibious assault ship can now act as a de facto small aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific, with F-35B fighters launching into the darkness from its deck. In a scene captured as Aviation Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Arnitt Jones signaled a Marine F-35B of VMFA-242 into position, the U.S. Navy demonstrated that these nocturnal sorties are no longer routine training events but part of a broader shift in how airpower is projected at sea. This development comes as Tripoli completes its transition to a Japan-based platform designed around aviation, without a well deck and optimized for fifth-generation aircraft, as reported by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Pacific Fleet, with the images made public through DVIDS.
USS Tripoli (LHA 7) conducted night F‑35B operations in the 7th Fleet on November 29, 2025, underscoring its transition to a Japan‑based aviation‑focused platform and its emerging role as a small carrier in the Indo‑Pacific (Picture Source: DVIDS / USNI)
The defense product at the heart of these operations is the pairing of the F-35B Lightning II and the America-class amphibious assault ship Tripoli, configured to operate as a “lightning carrier”. The F-35B’s short takeoff and vertical landing design, sensor fusion and low-observable profile allow it to take off from Tripoli’s reinforced, heat-resistant flight deck in tight launch cycles, including at night, while maintaining a reduced radar signature and high survivability. Tripoli’s design removes the traditional well deck to free up volume for an enlarged hangar, expanded aviation maintenance spaces and greater fuel and ordnance stowage, turning the ship into an aviation-centric platform capable, in surge mode, of embarking around twenty F-35Bs for continuous flight operations. These night flights also illustrate the Navy and Marine Corps’ shift toward distributed maritime operations, a doctrinal evolution that aims to spread airpower across multiple hulls rather than relying solely on nuclear carriers. By placing fifth-generation aircraft on LHAs, the U.S. multiplies launch points, complicates adversary targeting and opens several simultaneous axes of airpower across the Indo-Pacific.
Commissioned in 2020 and tested with a full complement of F‑35Bs during its 2022 maiden deployment, USS Tripoli was among the first large-deck amphibious ships to validate the lightning carrier concept. Following successful trials, the ship was designated for forward deployment to Sasebo, Japan, in 2025, replacing USS America as the region’s primary big-deck amphibious platform. VMFA‑242, known as the “Bats,” transitioned to the F‑35B in 2020 and achieved full operational capability in 2022 after extensive training and participation in major exercises such as Red Flag and Resolute Dragon. The integration of night deck operations aboard Tripoli now marks the convergence of these two developments, a ship designed around aviation and a squadron capable of delivering sustained, all-weather combat power across austere decks throughout the Indo‑Pacific. Within this framework, lightning carrier operations serve as a direct response to China’s expanding anti‑ship ballistic missile threat, particularly the DF‑21D and DF‑26, by establishing mobile, difficult‑to‑detect strike platforms that strengthen the survivability and flexibility of U.S. naval airpower in contested A2/AD environments.
From a tactical perspective, the combination of Tripoli and F-35B changes the way the Navy–Marine Corps team can fight at sea. Night flight operations complicate an adversary’s ability to track sorties and predict deck cycles, while the F-35B’s sensors and networking allow it to act as both a strike platform and an airborne node feeding targeting data to other naval and joint systems. Operating from a relatively compact hull compared with a nuclear aircraft carrier, Tripoli can disperse high-value air assets across a wider maritime area, reducing the concentration of risk and enabling distributed maritime operations. The STOVL performance of the F-35B makes it possible to sustain higher sortie rates from the shorter deck, even in confined waters or under threat conditions where conventional carrier operations might be constrained, turning an amphibious ship into a flexible tool for close air support, maritime strike and air defense in contested littorals. Beyond its kinetic role, the F-35B enhances the U.S. military’s emerging “kill web” by collecting and transmitting targeting data in real time to Aegis-equipped destroyers, submarines, and land-based fires such as HIMARS or M270 units. A single F-35B sortie at night can therefore reshape a maritime engagement by providing immediate, fused situational awareness to joint forces operating across the theater.
Strategically, conducting night operations within the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility sends a clear signal amid intensifying competition in the Indo‑Pacific. Basing USS Tripoli in Japan and routinely integrating VMFA‑242’s F‑35Bs into complex night evolutions expands the number of decks from which fifth‑generation aircraft can operate near critical maritime chokepoints and contested waters, including the East and South China Seas. This posture strengthens deterrence by offering decision‑makers a larger, more mobile, and less vulnerable set of airpower options than reliance on a single carrier strike group. It also reassures allies such as Japan and other regional partners that U.S. forces are not only present but continuously enhancing their capability to conduct night operations from dispersed platforms in coordination with joint and coalition assets. In a crisis around Taiwan or along the first island chain, a forward‑deployed lightning carrier like Tripoli, launching F‑35Bs at night, would provide a rapid, survivable, and adaptable tool for escalation control and precision strike without immediately committing the full weight of a supercarrier.
Seen from the flight deck, the image of a sailor directing a stealth fighter under night lighting on a forward-deployed amphibious assault ship is more than a snapshot of routine activity; it encapsulates a wider transformation in U.S. naval and Marine Corps doctrine in the Indo-Pacific. Night flight operations by F-35Bs from USS Tripoli show that the lightning carrier concept has moved from experiment to operational reality, with direct consequences for how the United States plans to deter, maneuver and, if required, fight in the region’s contested seas and skies in the years ahead.