Asia-Pacific
Precautionary landing keeps Air Force Osprey at Japanese civilian airport
By
Stars and Stripes February 25, 2026
Brian McElhiney and Keishi Koja
Stars and Stripes February 25, 2026
An Air Force CV-22B Osprey arrives at Yokota Air Base, Japan, April 5, 2018. (Stars and Stripes)
A U.S. Air Force CV-22 Osprey remained parked Wednesday at a civilian airport in northern Japan after making a precautionary landing earlier this week, Japanese defense officials said.
The tiltrotor aircraft, assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Wing at Kadena Air Base, landed at about 1:30 p.m. Monday at Iwate Hanamaki Airport in Hanamaki city, wing spokesman Capt. Cullen Drenkhahn said in an email Wednesday. No injuries or damage were reported, and commercial flights were not affected.
“The landing was executed safely and in accordance with policies,” he wrote. “An assessment is ongoing to gather additional information.”
The wing’s Ospreys are assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron at Yokota Air Base, a major airlift hub in western Tokyo.
The pilot made the precautionary landing in response to an inflight warning indicator, a spokesman for the Tohoku Defense Bureau said by phone Wednesday. The aircraft had been flying from Yokota to an unspecified destination, he said.
As of Wednesday morning, the Osprey remained parked on the apron and was undergoing inspections and maintenance, the spokesman said. It will depart once it is deemed safe to do so.
The bureau “immediately dispatched personnel to the site and provided information to relevant local governments,” he said.
Some Japanese government officials must speak to the press only on condition of anonymity.
An Osprey from the same squadron made a precautionary landing at that airport for the same reason on July 24 and departed the following day after inspections, a Tohoku Defense Bureau spokesman told Stars and Stripes at the time.
On Oct. 2, one of the squadron’s tiltrotors touched down at Hamamatsu Air Base in Shizuoka prefecture, also due to a warning indicator light.
The Osprey, which can take off and land like a helicopter and cruise like a fixed-wing aircraft, has faced heightened scrutiny in Japan. The U.S. and Japanese militaries grounded their Osprey fleets for nearly three months after a Yokota-based CV-22B crashed off Yakushima Island in November 2023, killing eight airmen.
The crash was attributed to a catastrophic mechanical failure and what investigators described as a “lack of urgency” by the crew in addressing an engine issue.
