US F-22 stealth fighter planes arrive in Japan

Kadena, Japan, Feb 17: Two US F-22 stealth fighter planes arrived today on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa in their first deployment overseas.

Two Raptors, the US Air Force's most advanced fighters and said to be the most expensive fighter planes ever built, arrived at US Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, a Reuters photographer and a TV cameraman said.

The US Air Force said ten other F22 Raptors were expected to land in Japan on Sunday, a week later than originally scheduled.

A US military spokesman earlier denied a report that the delay was due to a demand from North Korea during six-country talks on its nuclear arms programme in Beijing, which ended last Tuesday with an energy-for-arms deal.

The US Air Force first cited ''operational reasons'' as the cause of the delay of the three-month deployment, then said it was because of software problems.

US Air Force General Ronald Keys said last month that the F-22 was combat-ready, rejecting a report by the Pentagon's Office of Operational Test and Evaluation that said it was still not ''operationally suitable'' because its defensive avionics had response-time and threat-identification problems.

The Raptors are able to gather data from multiple sources to track, identify and kill air-to-air threats before being detected by radar, and have significant surface-strike capability, according to the US Air Force Web site.

Reuters

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