Government Needs to Stop Osprey

The American government informed the Japanese government of the deployment of the new American military Osprey transport plane to the Futenma airfield in Okinawa prefecture, which has been involved in past accidents. Having received this information, Defense Minister Morimoto headed out to Okinawa and Yamaguchi prefectures to explain this to the governors.

However, Mr. Morimoto is mistaken in speaking to those people. He should be speaking to the American government to halt this forced deployment.

The American government will transport 12 Ospreys to Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi prefecture in the latter half of July. At first, the plan was to pass on the test flights at Iwakuni and move them to Futenma, but due to the two recent accidents and the investigation results — that won’t be released until August — the plans have been changed to accommodate further test flights.

The American government has told the Japanese that their concerns will be taken into consideration. Despite that, plans to operate the Osprey at Futenma from October remain unchanged.

According to the American military’s strong explanation to the Japanese government, the April crash of a Marine plane in Morocco was not the result of mechanical failure, but of human error.

The details concerning the Air Force crash in June in Florida are unclear, but the Air Force has since said that the planes are safe and has continued to use them.

The Osprey is a specialized aircraft that has propellers on both sides that can turn 90 degrees to enable vertical level flight. Since consecutive accidents have occurred with planes that have no problems, it seems obvious that controlling the planes is difficult.

In fact, the accident rate for the Marine Osprey is 1.93 for every 100,000 hours, which is 1.11 higher than the CH-46 transport helicopter currently being used at Futenma. The Air Force version is at 13.47 for just 20,000 hours of flight time.

Futenma airfield is located in the middle of a residential area, and the Okinawan people have strongly expressed their desires to have it move out of the prefecture. It is difficult for the local residents to tolerate the deployment of an aircraft with such a high rate of crashes. It is only natural for their governor to adamantly oppose this.

From here on, it is difficult to think that the Americans will somehow recognize this gap. But despite this, allowing the deployment will only irritate the locals even further.

In the end, if an accident were to occur, both the Japanese and American governments should understand that the Japan-America Alliance could fall into a crisis that cannot be undone.

Mr. Morimoto says that Japan doesn’t have the authority to change the deployment. Perhaps Mr. Morimoto, as a military specialist, may understand the exact conditions, or that this is an impossible strategy.

However, what is required now is a political decision from the Defense Minister of Japan. He must not forget that he is coming up against the United States.