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TOKYO (AP) - The U.S. took its newest and most expensive stealth fighter on the road Saturday, deploying the F-22 to an air base on the southern Japan island of Okinawa for its first overseas mission.
The first two of a dozen F-22s roared into the Okinawa skies from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for a three-to-four month deployment to show "the flexibility that U.S. forces have to meet our ongoing commitments and security obligations throughout the Pacific," the U.S. military said in a statement.
Bringing the jets to Japan is a way of showing off the fighter's strengths in a region with a complex security balance that is being challenged by the rapid growth of Chinese and North Korean military power.
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