Well it seems there will perhaps be helicopter carriers in the near future:
They paid for and half built two Mistral class ships and developed the systems and aircraft for them to carry (Ka-52K etc) and have those aircraft and likely ground vehicles and systems in production for use on the two ships they didn't receive and likely the other two they would have built if France was not full of surrender monkeys.
Not to mention they likely planned and built support vessels and infrastructure for those vessels to operate in their chosen role.
Having invested all that money and time that they wont get back from the Frogs it makes sense for them to build replacements... they have full systems blueprints of Mistrals and have had time to decide on modifications to match more accurately their own special interests... ie make them more arctic friendly and likely better armed and more robust.
Things like this need lots of planning... even making sure there are enough qualified and trained people to operate the ships and shipyard space for maintainence etc.
R&D work for the helicopter carriers will kick off in 2018, the construction of the lead ship is expected to start in 2020 and in 2024 it will join the fleet.
So they clearly have not totally defined its design yet... personally I hope they use Nuke propulsion as a test for later larger projects/upgrades and try independent electric pod drive...
They have shown that when they are spending money they have not skimped on the new stuff, even if upgrades to existing models have been done at budget levels... like the T-72 upgrade and the Su-25SM upgrade etc etc.
The not skimping on new stuff means later upgrades can be based on brand new stuff so will offer greater performance increases because of the better designs... ie MiG-29SMT is affordable, but when MiG-35s with AESAs are in service then it makes sense to put AESAs in MiG-29SMTs as a down the line upgrade to expand the base of AESAs in service and to eliminate older models... making the SMTs more desirable for export too eventually when it comes time to replace them.
Regarding the other crap on this thread... time lines for plans change all the time.. for a decade and a half we have been hearing about the unified upgrade for their long range bombers/cruise missile carriers... to improve the Tu-22M3 and Tu-160 and Tu-95MS to Tu-22M3M and Tu-160M and Tu-95MSM level with new unified radars and new fire control systems to allow all three to carry new more capable missiles and all sorts of other advantages.
The way it was mentioned you would think it was already underway, but actually it was not and was only a very very slow process that probably didn't start until well after 2013...
They wont build a fixed wing carrier before they have a few new cruisers and destroyers to operate with it... otherwise it would be a sitting duck and rather useless on its own.
More importantly they need somewhere to go with it... they need strong international commerce that they need to protect with an ocean going fleet of ships... they wont have that until late 2020s if not early 2030s.
It appears they are working on VSTOL aircraft, but they are also working on cats and an upgrade of a light 5th gen fighter would make an excellent carrier aircraft... with 5th gen systems it does not need to carry 10 tons of bombs over enormous distances... for an air defence role it just needs to get airborne with max fuel and a few AAMs... it could simply be an airborne eye that detects threats at long range and directs ship launched missiles to intercept them, with a few AAMs to defend itself... or it could carry an air launched hypersonic antiship missile... or super fast hypersonic AAMs that can chase down and catch hypersonic anti ship missiles from behind....