The US military is grounding its entire fleet of V-22 Ospreys, a week after an Air Force CV-22 crashed off the coast of Yakushima Island, Japan, resulting in the deaths of all eight airmen aboard the aircraft.
Air Force Special Operations Command said in a release Wednesday evening that Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind, commander of AFSOC, directed an “operational standdown” of the Air Force’s CV-22 fleet “to mitigate risk while the investigation continues” into last week’s crash. Naval Air Systems Command also said Wednesday it was grounding the Navy and Marine Corps’ V-22s out of “an abundance of caution” as the CV-22 crash is investigated.
“Preliminary investigation information indicates a potential materiel failure caused the mishap, but the underlying cause of the failure is unknown at this time,” a Navy news release said.
Immediately following the crash last week, the government of Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture requested that all Ospreys on the island chain be grounded. The Pentagon, however, said it had not received an official request to ground the Ospreys.
“I’m not tracking an official request received here at the department,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said last week. “I’ve seen some of the comments that you just referenced. Right now, the Ospreys are still operating in Japan.”
Singh added that there is a “true commitment to safety” in the Pentagon “when it comes to any airmen operating any aircraft.”
“If the investigation concludes that there need to be additional steps taken, we’ll … certainly do that, but at this time, the investigation is underway on what happened,” she said.
The Osprey was conducting a “routine training mission” at the time of the crash, AFSOC said, which is still under investigation. The…
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