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The F-35B, a fifth-generation US fighter aircraft with advanced stealth capabilities, has achieved initial operational capability for combat deployment and will be deployed to Japan in 2017.

It will be the first time the fighter has been deployed outside the US.

The US Marines announced the news in a July 31 statement on their website.

“The U.S. Marine Corps’ F-35B Lightning II aircraft reached initial operational capability July 31, 2015 with a squadron of 10 F-35Bs ready for world-wide deployment,” the statement said.

In a separate statement, Gen. Joseph Dunford, Commandant of the Marine Corps, said he was “pleased to announce that VMFA-121 [Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121] has achieved initial operational capability in the F-35B.”

The aircraft to be deployed are ten F-35Bs with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities produced for Marine Corps use. They are set to be deployed in Yuma, Arizona, before being relocated to Iwakuni Marine Base in Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture in 2017, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported. Japan’s Kyodo News agency also said the F-35 was very likely to be deployed at Iwakuni as its first overseas base.

The US previously announced its Japanese deployment plans for the F-35B at a Nov. 2013 US-Japan Security Consultative Committee (2+2) meeting, which was also significant as the setting where the US first expressed its “welcome” of Japan’s exercise of collective self-defense authority.

Both the South Korean Air Force and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force separately plan to introduce another F-35 aircraft, the F-35A, which was developed for ordinary air force use and is expected to achieve initial operational capability around July 2016. The F-35C, which is to be operated as a carrier-based aircraft for the US Navy, is scheduled to achieve initial operational capability around February 2018.

By Gil Yun-hyung, Washington correspondent

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