The commanding officer at a US Marine base on the Japanese island of Okinawa has been fired over a "loss of trust", the US Marines said Tuesday. A brief statement said Colonel Mark S. Coppess had been relieved of duty as commanding officer of the Futenma base "due to a loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead his command."
There was no immediate comment or further detail from the Marines on why Coppess had been dismissed, but a US defence official told AFP it had nothing to do with a string of accidents that have plagued military aircraft in Japan.
In February, the commander of the Marines' Japan-based Osprey squadron was fired after several accidents involving the hybrid aircraft.
The most serious, in 2017, involved the crash of an MV-22 Osprey off the east coast of Australia.