US
Marines eye Japan as a training
yard By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - With the energies of Japanese
politicians consumed by infighting, the United
States Marine Corps (USMC) is pushing forward with
plans to gain a stronger foothold in the Japanese
archipelago.
Taking advantage of the
scheduled deployment of MV-22 Osprey transport
aircraft to Okinawa, the USMC plans to conduct
training flights over almost all of mainland
Japan. With US Marines being forced to reduce
their military footprint on Okinawa due to local
opposition, America seems intent on making the
rest of Japan its training yard.
Starting
later this year, the US government plans to deploy
a total
of 24 Ospreys to the
controversial USMC air station at Futenma in
Okinawa, to replace aging 24 CH-46 transport
helicopters.
According to a recent USMC
report titled "Final Environmental Review for
Basing MV-22 at MCAS Futenma and Operating in
Japan (April 2012)" the US will use this situation
to moves the Ospreys around the Japanese mainland
freely. This report, published on Japan's Ministry
of Defense website, shows detailed plans for
low-altitude flight training in Japan via six
different flight routes above the Japanese
archipelago highlighted by different colors below.
Specifically, those six routes
are: the Tohoku route across Akita
prefecture(pink); the Tohoku route across Miyagi
prefecture(green); the Hokushinetsu route across
Nigata prefecture(blue); the Shikoku- the Kii
peninsula route(orange); the Kyushu route
(yellow); the Amami Islands route (purple).
Those routes apparently avoid flying
directly over Japan's four largest metropolitan
areas of Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka, but
still cover a large part of eastern Japan.
The USMC plans have come to light amid a
rapidly widening internal rift within the ruling
Democratic Party of Japan over Prime Minister
Yoshihiko Noda's plans to double the nation's
sales tax.
The MV-22 "combines the
vertical capability of a helicopter with the speed
and range of a fixed-wing aircraft", the
environmental review stresses about the
significance of the planned deployment of the
aircraft. "Its capabilities would significantly
strengthen Marine Expeditionary Force's (III
MEF's) ability to assist in the defense of Japan,
perform humanitarian assistance and disaster
response, and fulfill other Alliance roles."
"The US has been always very good at
making use of trigger incidents in the past,"
Ukeru Magosaki, the former chief of the Japanese
Foreign Ministry's international intelligence
bureau, told Asia Times Online. "It turns
situations to its advantage nicely."
Under
the proposed action, the USMC would make the
fullest possible use of Camp Fuji in Shizuoka
prefecture and Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS)
Iwakuni in Yamaguchi prefecture on mainland Japan
and those six routes extending along Japanese
islands. Currently, the CH-46E squadrons do not
use Camp Fuji and MCAS Iwakuni and those routes.
"Due to the distance, the CH-46E aircrews
do not regularly conduct operations on mainland
Japan," the environmental review said. "However,
given the MV-22s ability to fly in airplane mode,
these aircraft would be able to cover greater
distances in less time than the CH-46s."
The MV-22 can fly roughly twice as fast,
four times as far, and carry three times the
combat or humanitarian mission load of the CH-46E,
it said. Ospreys can fly continuously for up to
3,900 kilometers, while the CH-46E has a maximum
flight distance of about 700 kilometers.
Although the aircraft would be based at
MCAS Futenma, the USMC plans to send a detachment
of two to six MV-22s to Camp Fuji and MCAS Iwakuni
each month for two to three days. At Camp Fuji,
the deployed MV-22 detachments are expected to fly
about 500 annual operations making for a 10%
increase in overall activity at that location. For
MCAS Iwakuni, a similar number of annual MV-22
operations are also expected, on average, which
would account for a 0.8% increase in total
airfield operations.
The USMC expects that
the squadrons would likely fly on one or more of
these six routes during each day of these brief
deployments, conducting a total of 330 operations
annually on each route, the report said. These
added operations would result in increases in use
averaging 21% for all routes, with the other
primary users consisting of AV-8B Harriers and
FA-18 Hornets.
The MV-22 squadrons are
expected to conduct 28% and 4% of these six route
operations between evening and night,
respectively, or about one-third of them during
late afternoon and night. In addition, the US
plans to conduct low-level flight training down to
500 feet, or 152 meters, above ground level in
those six courses, at airspeeds of 120 to 250
knots, depending upon the flight mode.
The
existing US facilities on Okinawa will be a major
component of the planned training flights. The
USMC plans to operate about 6,700 flights out of
Futenma annually, which would result in a net
decrease of around 2,600 airfield operations per
year.
However, it has proposed 69 landing
zones for use by the MV-22 on Okinawa. Fifty of
these located on mainland Okinawa and the island
of Iejima will be tactical landing zones used
solely for training missions consisting of
landings, take-offs, and approaches that simulate
combat situations.
The review for the
first time also mentioned USMC plans to use
Ospreys in six landing zones scheduled for
construction in the Okinawa's Northern Training
Area. It aims to conduct 420 operations in each of
those six zones for Ospreys annually for a total
of 2,520. This is a 95% increase compared with the
current CH-46E's 1,288 operations.
For
Okinawans, the plans to deploy the Osprey at
Futenma strengthen perceptions that the air base
will become a permanent fixture, although local
governments, supported by the majority of
Okinawans, have demanded the immediate closure and
transfer of Futenma outside of the prefecture.
The MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor vertical
take-off and landing (VTOL) transport aircraft was
once called the "widow-maker" due to a series of
accidents during its development; 36 people have
died in V-22s since the plane began flying so far.
Most recently two marines died in an MV-22 crash
in April in Morocco.
It is this safety
record that concerns Okinawa prefectural
government and local residents, leading them to
fiercely oppose this planned deployment.
The US has capitalized on change of US
military bases on Okinawa. In the late 1990s,
there were plans to just close the Futenma
airbase, not to relocate it to Henoko, Nago, in
northern Okinawa, after three marines raped a
12-year-old schoolgirl; but after that, the US
administration managed to make the closing of
Futenma a package deal linked to the building of a
new sea-based heliport off Camp Schwab.
This planned heliport will have two
1,800-meter V-shaped runways. However, helicopters
have no need for such long runways and this is
especially true for Ospreys, which can take off
and land in small spaces.
Military experts
believe the US intends to create a second Kaneda
Air Base off Camp Schwab just in case the original
Kadena Air Base is attacked. This is said to be
one of the major reasons why the Pentagon has
opposed the integration of USMC Futenma air
station with the Kaneda Air base.
Kosuke Takahashi is a
Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. Besides Asia
Times Online, he also writes for Jane's Defence
Weekly as Tokyo correspondent. His twitter is
@TakahashiKosuke
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