Marines from MCAS Futenma Expeditionary Firefighting and Recovery conduct night arrested landing training with F/A-18s from VMFA(AW)-115. Public Domain

KAGOSHIMA, Japan — A new Self-Defense Forces base on an uninhabited southwestern Japan island that is scheduled to host US fighter jet drills is expected to be completed in March 2030, three years behind schedule, according to the Defense Ministry.

The delay in base completion on Kagoshima Prefecture's Mage Island is mainly due to manpower and material shortages for building provisional facilities to accommodate construction workers following a powerful earthquake that hit Ishikawa Prefecture on New Year's Day, the ministry's local bureau said earlier this month.

Construction began in January 2023 and was initially estimated to last four years.

The bureau has also cited rough waves around the island as hampering the transport of materials and the unsuitability of the earth and sand on the island for landfill work.

Under a plan agreed by the Japanese and US governments, a takeoff and landing training site for U.S. carrier-borne fighter jets will be relocated from Iwoto Island in the Pacific, around 1,250 kilometers south of Tokyo, to Mage Island. The relocation will take place after building two runways on Mage Island.

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The runways will be completed in late 2027 ahead of the base's other facilities, possibly paving the way for the US military to start exercises at the new site by 2030, according to the bureau.

The US military had been conducting the fighter jet drills at its Atsugi base near Tokyo until the practice site was moved to Iwoto Island in the early 1990s as a temporary measure due to noise complaints from local residents.

As part of the realignment of US forces in Japan, the fighter jets were all transferred by 2018 from Atsugi to Iwakuni in the western Japan prefecture of Yamaguchi, resulting in longer flights to the training site. Iwakuni is located some 1,400 km northwest of Iwoto.

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After Washington asked Tokyo to prepare a more convenient and permanent location for the drills, Mage Island, located about 400 km south of Iwakuni, emerged as a candidate site.

The new base will also be used for drills by the Air Self-Defense Force's F-35B stealth fighter jets set to be deployed in Miyazaki Prefecture, and by the Ground Self-Defense Force's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade based in Nagasaki Prefecture, both in southwestern Japan.

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