No to the C , barely for the B . The B variant could in theory land on destroyers and cruisers and battleships with helipad space , and even take off from those , but it ' d be very limited . First there is the issue with vertical take offs , you do so with fairly little fuelpayload so you ' re massively constraining the F 35 B and not getting a lot of what it ' s capable of , it ' s just not designed for that simply . If you wanted quality eyes in the sky and possibly some heavy munitions that could be used within a minute or two ' s notice in an area within two or so hundred kilometers of a ship , and only had a destroyer or something to put there . then there is a very edge case reason for it , but realistically not worth it over alternative methods . Next we have the other things to consider , any ship carrying an F 35 needs to be able to refuel , rearm , and repair it . So for a tiny destroyer , that ' s not just reinforcing the landing pad , that ' s finding space for several pieces of heavy machinery , bombs , hoses , extra crew to manage it all , and lots of spare parts . On a battleship it ' d be easier to find the space for this stuff , but to take an Iowa class ship for this would be fairly pointless and very cost ineffective . The larger a ships dedicated air wing , the more efficient it ' s repair and maintenance becomes . If you have one fighter then you still need all the equipment and spares for all the problems , a full sized carrier doesn ' t need to have a spare engine or radar or other part for every single plane , it just has a few that it gets replaced as they are used up . On a smaller ship though , you need one of everything or you get out of action until you can get replacements shipped in or go to a portland area . You could forgo certain larger and more reliable parts like the entire engine , but the point is it ' s still not something to fit on a ship of that size that easily . Overall it ' s just impractical and would result in relatively high downtime for the aircraft , it ' s range is short , it ' s cost in trained crew per aircraft is high , all sorts of things are just not worth it when compared with the alternatives of just having a dedicated carrier or LHAD mixed in with your fleet , or to just take over a small section of land to use as an impromptu runway .