A British F-35B Lightning II fighter operating from the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales made an emergency landing at Kagoshima Airport in southern Japan at about 11:30 a.m. on 10 August after a technical malfunction. Airport officials said the runway was closed for roughly 20 minutes while the ¥88-million jet was towed clear, briefly delaying commercial flights. No injuries or visible damage were reported, and Japanese authorities are inspecting the aircraft before it rejoins the deployment. The incident occurred during Operation Highmast, a two-week exercise involving the U.K. Carrier Strike Group, Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force and U.S. forces in the western Pacific. The same deployment saw Royal Air Force F-35Bs conduct the first ever take-offs and landings on the Japanese helicopter carrier-convert JS Kaga, underscoring Tokyo’s push to field its own short-take-off-and-vertical-landing fighters. It is the second emergency diversion by a U.K. F-35B in less than two months; another jet from the Prince of Wales was stranded in Thiruvananthapuram, India, for five weeks after a hydraulic fault in June. Following the latest malfunction, the 65,000-ton Prince of Wales arrived at Yokosuka Naval Base on 12 August for a port call that British and Japanese officials said demonstrates a shared commitment to a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” The Royal Navy operates 37 F-35Bs, with reliability of the Lockheed Martin aircraft under heightened scrutiny.