An aerodrome and other facilities for conducting massive deck-based exercises from aircraft carriers of the U.S. Navy will be built at the expense of Tokyo on the uninhabited Mage island in Kagoshima Prefecture in southwestern Japan by 2024, TASS reported.

The construction of the facility will reportedly begin in 2022, and aviation exercises are supposed to begin there in 2025.

In early December, Tokyo announced that the Japanese Defense Ministry had agreed to purchase the uninhabited Mage island for almost $ 146 million, which previously belonged to a private company from Tokyo.

Aviation exercises, which simulate takeoffs and landings of aircraft on the deck of aircraft carriers, are accompanied by great noise and invariably cause protests in Japan and the local government. Because of this, they were transferred from Atsugi base southwest of Tokyo to the almost deserted remote Iwo Jima island. However, it is located too far - over 1200 km from Tokyo.

As a result, back in 2011, the military of the two countries decided to work out the issue of placing an airfield for such training on the Mage island with an area of ​​8 square meters. It is located just 400 km from the Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in the southwest of the main Japanese Honshu island, where about 60 American carrier-based aircraft are now relocated. The Mage facility will be used jointly by the US and Japan.