Okinawa Times and Ryukyu Shimpo both gave prominent play to the Defense Ministry’s announcement yesterday on the accident rate of the MV-22 in the U.S. fiscal year ending in September, which stood at  3.27 per 100,000 flight hours. Pointing out that the rate was the highest in the past five years due to the serious accidents that occurred in Nago city almost a year ago and in Australia in August and that it was worse than the accident rate of 2.72 for all Marine aircraft, the articles claimed that this shows that the Osprey is a “defective aircraft.” Although the U.S. military reportedly attributed the relatively high accident rate to the extremely tough conditions under which the Osprey is customarily operated, the papers dismissed this explanation and stressed that local skepticism about the aircraft’s safety is bound to increase.