US jets collide in mid-air drill

Tokyo – Five US Marines were missing after two Marine Corps aircraft collided in mid-air and crashed into the sea off the coast of Japan during an air-to-air refuelling exercise yesterday, Japanese and American officials said.

Japan’s defence ministry said its maritime forces had so far found two of the seven Marines who were aboard the aircraft – an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet and a KC130 Hercules – at the time.

One was in a stable condition at Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, while the second had been found about 10 hours after the collision and brought aboard a Japanese military vessel, the ministry said. No other details about the second Marine were known, a spokesperson said.

Search-and-rescue efforts for the remaining five continued, Japan’s highest-ranking military officer said. “We plan to keep at it all through the night,” Katsutoshi Kawano, chief of the self-defence forces’ joint staff said.

The incident adds to a growing list of US military aviation accidents around the world in recent years, prompting hearings in Congress to address the rise.

The Military Times reported earlier this year that aviation accidents jumped nearly 40% from fiscal years 2013 to 2017. At least 133 service members were killed in those incidents, it said.

Congressional leaders have called the rash of accidents a “crisis” and blamed it on continuous combat operations, deferred modernisation, lack of training and ageing equipment.