Japan's SDF troops to return home as aerial search for MH370 disbanded

Following a directive issued by the Australian government, Japan's Self-Defense Force (SDF) personnel who were deployed to help search for missing Malaysia Airlines jet were told Monday that their aerial searches have been disbanded.

The P-3C surveillance plane and the SDF personnel were given orders to return to Japan from the Australian Air Force's base near Perth around Thursday this week, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said.

Following a meeting with Onodera and the Australian government, Onodera was informed that the ongoing search was "entering a new phase."

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Onodera along with a host of multinational forces currently involved in the search, that operations would now continue using high-tech submersibles and would be expanded over a wide area, as aerial and satellite searches for the missing plane's debris have turned up few leads.

The Malaysian flight MH370 carrying 239 people onboard suddenly vanished from radar over the South China Sea after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8 and the ongoing searches have provided little clues or comfort for the families of the missing, despite analytics from satellite and radar imagery suggesting the plane terminated its flight in the southern Indian Ocean.

Japan's defense minister initially gave the order for his troops to join the search for the missing plane in mid-March and searches by the SDF were conducted by the P-3C plane above the Indian Ocean once the troops were switched from Malaysia to Perth.

Abbot told Onodera that the search would now be shifting its focus from the sky as the near-two-month operation has failed to locate any debris from the missing plane, to an intensified underwater search, focusing on a large swathe of seabed.

According to local media, Abbot believes that at this late stage in the search it is unlikely that any debris will be found from the sky on the surface of the ocean as it would, by now, most likely be waterlogged and have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, hence Onodera giving the order for his SDF aerial squadron to return home.