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‘US military wants more aircraft in Japan’

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The United States military plans to deploy another version of the Osprey planes in an airbase on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, a US government official says.

US Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said the CV-22 Ospreys would likely be deployed at Kedena Air Base in the Okinawa prefecture, despite fierce opposition by islanders and warnings that any crash of the aircraft — of extremely poor safety record — could threaten the huge American military presence on the island, the UPI reported on Sunday.

During his visit to the US on Friday, Okinawa prefectural spokesman, Susumu Matayoshi, however, told Christopher Johnstone, the director for Northeast Asia at the US Department of Defense, that the prefecture would never agree to the planes’ deployment.

During a news conference at the Pentagon on January 11, Donley said the US military was considering the deployment, but declined to provide details.

Pentagon afterwards issued a statement, saying, “Any deployment of the Air Force CV-22 to the Asia-Pacific region is years away…The United States has not notified the government of Japan about the CV-22 because we have not made a basing decision.”

The US marines deployed 12 of their MV-22 Ospreys to Marine Corps Air Station Futenma last autumn and another 12 MV-22s are planned for deployment this summer.

The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft with rotors that facilitate takeoff like a helicopter and engines that can tilt forward powering it to fly like an airplane at much faster speed than a chopper.

Since its early years in 1990s, the aircraft has had multiple malfunctions and many accidents.

Opposition to the US military footprint in Okinawa is intense. The 1.4 million residents on the island have been demanding the Futenma airbase — which sits in a densely-packed residential area — to be moved off the island.

Okinawa has become known as the site of enduring tensions with US forces, and hence a lasting source of conflict between the two sides. Around half of the 47,000 US service personnel in Japan are based on the strategically-located island.

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