Marines Begin Crashing Ospreys On Okinawa

[longknife]

by G-Had on October 5, 2012 · @ Marines Begin Crashing Ospreys On Okinawa | The Duffel Blog

Lieutenant General Terry Robling, the commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, told The Duffel Blog that Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 265 (HMM-265, Motto: Look Out Below!) had crashed its first Osprey on the island at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Futenma on October 1 and will begin crashing additional Ospreys just as soon as they can be scraped off the tarmac of MCAS Iwakuni.

The MV-22 Osprey, known affectionately by its crews as The Flying Pinto, is a revolutionary vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft that can fly like a plane and hover like a block of cement.

It’s operated with an exceptional safety record ever since the first one spontaneously blew up on the assembly line and has a history of outstanding operational crashes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Libya since the Marine Corps first began fielding them in 2005.

“If you use the key metric of crashes while in-flight, the Osprey is the safest aircraft ever fielded in history,” General Robling said before adding that all of the Osprey’s crashes have occurred on the ground.

General Robling also said that after an extensive crash-test program, the Ospreys had been cleared to pancake into Japanese houses, hospitals, nuclear power facilities, and other landmarks, as well as the occasional general officer’s career.

“HMM-265 spent the last few months practicing orientation crashes on the [Japanese] mainland, so the crews could get used to crashing the aircraft in and around Okinawa,” General Robling said.

“They’ve practiced low-speed crashes, high-speed crashes, day crashes, night crashes, crashes in any type of weather you can imagine.”

Many of the pilots of HMM-265 are excited about the upcoming move.

“My grandfather actually crashed his F4U Corsair into Shuri Castle back in 1945, and my father crashed his CH-46 onto some of the same airfields I’m going to be flying into,” said Osprey pilot Captain Sam Fulco.

Previously, the government of Okinawa had opposed allowing the Osprey to crash into Japanese soil after expressing concerns about its crash-worthiness.

Okinawa’s governor, Hirokazu Nakaima, has argued that Japan has some of the highest crash standards in the world, many dating back to 1944.

“We don’t just allow anyone to crash their planes into our island without ensuring that they will do so in a way that takes into account both our history and culture,” Governor Nakaima said.

General Robling said that HMM-265′s Ospreys have been specially-modified for Okinawa crashes.

“We’ve installed extra-leaky hydraulics and special flight-control software, so that as soon as the nose impacts the ground the tiltrotors are automatically jettisoned in different directions, before exploding on their own, ensuring the maximum amount of damage.”

In addition, all Osprey crews will carry little rice cakes to hand out to any homeowners they inconvenience and have been repeatedly drilled on the proper Okinawan way to say “Forgiveness, please.”

General Robling said that while the Marine Corps will conduct its crashes in the most Japanese way possible, “we do respectfully refuse their request that at least 25% of our crashes be into American warships.”

“We won’t go any higher than 8%,” he added.

 

[daveman]

 

[waltky]

Quick U.S. military response to Okinawa rape case...

Okinawa governor says US response quick on rape case
Thu, Oct 25, 2012 - The governor of Japan’s southern island chain of Okinawa on Tuesday welcomed the “quick” US response to an alleged rape by servicemen of a local woman, saying Washington was taking the case seriously.

Governor Hirokazu Nakaima was visiting Washington for a previously planned symposium on Okinawa’s heavy US military presence a week after two 23-year-old sailors were arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman on a street. Nakaima, who had earlier called the purported crime “insane” and told the US that Okinawans were “fed up,” praised the response he heard during his meetings in Washington. “My impression is that they were very quick in their response,” Nakaima told reporters. “It’s not just the response, but also they’re taking it seriously. That was apparent.” “The way they responded makes very clear they’re taking it seriously,” he said, while adding that he was awaiting further details on the case.

In meetings with Nakaima, US officials Kurt Campbell and Mark Lippert pledged cooperation and said that “we take all allegations of misconduct by our servicepeople extremely seriously,” US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. The US put all 47,000 members of the armed forces in Japan — both in Okinawa and elsewhere — under an indefinite nighttime curfew in response to the case. The alleged rape came amid already high tensions in Okinawa, which recently saw demonstrations against the US deployment to the island of the Osprey aircraft, which local activists charge has a poor safety record.

The protests against the Osprey have been among the largest in Okinawa since 1995, when tens of thousands took to the streets urging a smaller US footprint after three soldiers were arrested for the gang-rape of a 12-year-old girl. The 1995 gang-rape led the US military to ramp up cultural sensitivity training for troops in Okinawa, but the two troops arrested last week, Christopher Browning and Skyler Dozier Walker, were based in Texas and reportedly only on a brief mission to Okinawa.

Senator Jim Webb, a former combat marine who has long taken an interest in Okinawa, told the symposium that the nighttime curfew was “backwards” and that the military should instead encourage more interaction with residents. “You can’t have both sides thinking that the barbarians are on the other side of the gate,” said Webb, a Democrat from Virginia who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia. “I just think it’s a great opportunity for the American military, when they can live and operate in a place like Okinawa, to get out and fully experience the depth and the history of the culture.”

Okinawa governor says US response quick on rape case - Taipei Times

 

[waltky]

More Ospreys on the way...

Program gets $1.4B more to build Ospreys in Texas
January 2, 2013 — The Navy has added $1.4 billion to a Bell-Boeing contract to build 22 V-22 Ospreys in Texas.

The Amarillo Globe-News reported Tuesday that the contact modification includes fiscal 2013 funding for 17 MV-22s, the Marine Corps Osprey version, and four CV-22s for Air Force Special Operations.

Bell-Boeing is a joint venture between Textron Inc.'s Bell helicopter business and Boeing Co. The U.S. military plans to use the tilt-rotor aircraft to replace older CH-46 helicopters.

More than 10 percent of the work will be performed in Amarillo, where Bell Helicopter also assembles utility and attack choppers for the military. Navy officials say about 25 percent of the work will be done in Fort Worth. The deal also provides funding to help build 19 MV-22s and 18 CV-22s in fiscal 2014.

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