Okinawa Marines cannot deploy rapidly due to transport and range constraints
Evidence
Marines in Okinawa also don’t have the transportation necessary to get involved in significant numbers during an emergency. To deploy, marines rely on Navy transportation vessels harbored in Sasebo, Japan. During a 2013 drill simulating a response to China’s seizing contested territory, such as the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, marines relied on a vessel based in San Diego to transport troops and weaponry. The Marines’ controversial Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft doesn’t have the range to transport troops to the Senkaku/Diaoyus without in-air refueling; and with just twenty-four Ospreys in Okinawa, the Marines can send fewer than six hundred troops at most in a single deployment. If the Marines can’t operate independently and speedily from Okinawa, what kind of regional deterrent force are they? — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 884
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- SEED: The 2013 drill where marines relied on a San Diego ship could anchor an article on the gap between force posture rhetoric and real capability
Related
- Okinawa Marines lack transport capacity to deploy rapidly in a regional crisis (similarity 0.96)
- Okinawa’s Marine force shrank sharply during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars without harm (similarity 0.82)
- Missile advances make close-in Okinawa bases militarily obsolete (similarity 0.78)
- US military can project power farther than any rival without overseas bases (similarity 0.78)