On Wednesday, the U.S. military grounded its fleet of V-22 Osprey aircraft following a fatal crash off the coast of Japan last week. It renewed controversy over the deployment of tilt-rotor aircraft when Tokyo grounded its small fleet the day after the fatal incident. The U.S. and Japanese governments deny that the Boeing and Bell Helicopter-developed Osprey is prone to accidents.
U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) said in a statement that preliminary information indicates a potential material failure was responsible for the mishap. On Nov. 29 off Yakushima Island, about 1,040 km (650 miles) southwest of the capital, Tokyo, a plane crashed during a routine training mission.
According to Boeing, at least 400 Ospreys have been delivered and are primarily used by the U.S. Air Force, the Marines and the Navy in Japan and elsewhere. Some supplies and personnel are delivered by them to the USS Carl Vinson, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier deployed to Japan. “If the Osprey grounding keeps going for a week or more, the inconvenience starts to become something more. And without the Osprey, training can be affected, and that affects readiness,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies.
As soon as the crash happened, Japan grounded its 14 Ospreys and asked the U.S. to suspend flights of V-22s operating in its territory.
After initial halts in flights of the doomed aircraft’s unit, the U.S. military said other Ospreys would continue to fly once safety checks were completed. The U.S. military often grounds entire fleets after fatal accidents. Japan’s defence ministry said its aircraft remain grounded as of Thursday.
“It goes without saying that ensuring flight safety is the highest priority in the operation of aircraft,” Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Hirokazu Matsuno, said on Thursday. “We will continue to request information sharing with the U.S. side to ensure flight safety.” The deployment of the aircraft in pacifist Japan has faced opposition, particularly from residents of the southwest Okinawan islands, where there has been a significant U.S. military presence since Japan’s defeat in World War Two.
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A crash in 2016 also led the U.S. to ground its Osprey fleet in Japan. More than 20 of those deaths occurred after the V-22 entered service in 2007. According to the Flight Safety Foundation, at least 50 personnel have died in crashes operating or testing the aircraft.
As part of a routine military exercise in northern Australia, three U.S. Marines died in an Osprey crash in August. During a NATO training exercise in northern Norway in 2022, four U.S. personnel were killed in an Osprey crash in a remote area of northern Norway.
