Editorial: Japan to Choose Osprey for China Defense?

MV-22 Ospray (Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons)

By James Hardy

The aircraft that was part of the Okinawa controversy could become part of Japan’s defense arsenal.

Irony alert. The MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft – the most recent symbol of Tokyo and Washington's roughshod handling of the Okinawa base issue – could become a key part of the Japanese military's defense of the same island chain from a future Chinese invasion.

This was one of the many messages that came out of the recent landing of two US Marine Corps MV-22s on the flight deck of the JS Hyuga helicopter carrier. The landings on Hyuga, just one element of the ongoing Dawn Blitz exercises off the Californian coast, came only a year after the Okinawan prefectural government had heavily objected to the deployment of 12 MV-22s to the marines' Futenma air station in Ginowan.

In the view of the Okinawan government, Futenma is the last place that should host an aircraft with a troubled development history and controversial design. That two V-22s had already experienced "hard landings" (military speak for crashes) in 2012 did nothing to assuage the doubts of a population that remembers the August 2004 crash of a US Marine Corps CH-53D transport helicopter at Okinawa International University.

Tokyo's handling of the MV-22s' deployment to Okinawa was characteristically cack-handed –  remember, this was the Democratic Party of Japan government whose first prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, had to fall on his sword over broken election pledges to Okinawa over the base relocation issue.

Some tone deaf comments on the relocation issue by the Ministry of Defence's Okinawa bureau chief added to the anger on the islands and undermined the familiar bromides about "considering the feelings of the Okinawan population". Eventually, Tokyo opted for damage control, hoping that a slow, incremental introduction of the MV-22 to Okinawa after a shakedown in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, would take the heat out of the issue. In March it was announced that a second squadron would arrive in Japan in July. It too will first operate from Iwakuni before transitioning to Futenma.

Read the full 2 page story at The Diplomat