Roundup: Japan gains provisional approval to deploy controversial Osprey planes to Saga Pref.

Japan's government has received provisional agreement from the governor of Saga Prefecture in southwestern Japan to conduct surveys ahead of the possible deployment of Osprey aircraft the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) plans to acquire and use at a local airport there.

Saga Gov. Yoshinori Yamaguchi was quoted by local media as provisionally accepting the government's request to deploy the controversial Osprey V-22 aircraft, despite their checkered safety record, although telling Defense Minister Gen Nakatani he would "need some additional time" to mull the matter but would respond "carefully."

Nakatani, to sweeten the pot, told Yamaguchi he will drop a plan to transfer to Saga airport some of the U.S. Marine Corps' training programs that were originally earmarked to be transferred from Okinawa to lessen the U.S. base-hosting burdens of the locals on the tiny island there.

The original plan to transfer the Marine's Osprey-related training exercises had drawn a great deal of flak from both the residents of Saga Prefecture as well as the United States, who are also opposed to the move.

The government is eyeing having 17 GSDF Ospreys based at Saga airport from 2019, but the public as well as opposition parties have voiced their concern over the safety of the tilt-rotor plane, which can take off and land like a helicopter, but fly like a regular airplane.

In May this year, a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey aircraft crashed in Hawaii, killing two U.S. Marines and injuring 20 other occupants, and the accident-prone planes' safety record was also in focus in August last year when four crew members escaped injury when a Marine Corps' Osprey also made a "hard landing" near the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, in the United States.

In April 2012, an Osprey crashed in Morocco and killed two Marines and in Florida in June of the same year, a crash which injured all five crew members did little to improve faith in the plane, each of which costs more than 100 million U.S. dollars.

During the Osprey's developmental phase, 30 Marines died in three crashes, including 19 in a single accident in Arizona in 2000, according to official U.S. military aviation records.

Adding to the plane's dubious safety record, in 2010 an Air Force CV-22 touched down short of its landing zone in Afghanistan, hit a ditch, and flipped over, killing four Marines.

More than 20 units of the MV-22 Osprey are currently stationed at the controversial Futenma Air Station in Okinawa, itself central to a long-standing impasse between the local and central government over its relocation to a less-inhabited part of the island, and the government here has committed to buying at least 17 more Ospreys to be used by the Ground Self-Defense Force, much to the consternation of citizens and concerned prefectural officials here. Endit