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Three US Marine Corps soldiers died Sunday after a military plane crashed near Darwin, Australia, during a routine training exercise. Five others have been transported to the Royal Darwin Hospital in serious condition.
The plane, a troop-carrying MV-22B Osprey, crashed on Melville Island around 9:30 a.m. local time with 23 people on board, according to a statement from the Marine Rotational Force. That force has deployed to Australia every year since 2011 and now numbers 2,500 Marines.
The Marines were taking part in Exercise Predators Run, according to the statement, a joint military exercise that also includes soldiers from the Philippines, Indonesia and East Timor.
Recovery efforts are continuing and an investigation into the cause of the crash is underway, according to the statement.
The Osprey is a particularly complex aircraft with a turbulent history. With two rotor blades on its spread wings, it takes off like a helicopter and can fly like a fixed-wing aircraft, meaning pilots need experience in both.
It has been used by the Marine Corps since the early 1990s, but in 2000, the fleet of Ospreys was grounded after two accidents, including one at night over North Carolina that killed all four Marines on board.
Last year, nine Marines died in two separate accidents. An Osprey plane crashed in June during a training mission near Glamis, California, killing five people. Another crashed in a valley in Beiarn, Norway, killing all four on board.
Prof. Peter Dean, director of foreign policy and defense at the Center for American Studies at the University of Sydney, said Ospreys have become less of a problem over time, and some studies suggest they are no more risky than other fighter jets, but Sunday’s crash would once again raise questions about their safety.
“It’s a unique design,” Professor Dean said. “The first thing everyone will do is ask questions about the platform itself; And then the next question is what were the flight conditions like? Is there something out of the ordinary?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the accident was “tragic” and Australian authorities were focused on “ensuring full support and assistance is provided at this difficult time.”
It is the second fatal accident involving joint US-Australian aircraft and training this year. In July, an Australian Army MRH-90 Taipan helicopter crashed in waters off the Whitsunday Islands, more than 1,000 miles east of the Osprey crash on Sunday, killing four Australian defense personnel.
That exercise, Talisman Saber, was much broader, involving Australia, the United States, and several other countries. But in both cases, the plane crashed during the kind of joint exercises that have become more common, more intense and more complicated in recent years as the United States has stepped up its military pace in the Indo-Pacific in an effort to deter the Chinese. aggression in the region.
US troops have rotated through Darwin since World War II. Since the Marine Rotational Force was established as an annual feature of the US-Australia alliance 12 years ago, the force has expanded from an initial 200 Marines to more than 10 times that number. They are scheduled to stay in Darwin for seven months, until October.
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