I said "F**k Me" 6 times during your presentation. This was considered a viable operation? Maybe they should have kept a few LST's around instead of expending them as targets.
@@therchas Right - but they failed at the 'political optics' goal because they failed at the viability and effectiveness of the operation. I don't exactly "watch the news" at this point, but I haven't noticed any media trying to put a positive spin on this.
@@RyTrapp0I think you are right. The need has not lessened at all, so the end of the operation implies that they've failed in the optics objectives. Most of the food is just sitting on the end of the pier because Israel has targeted food aid trucks and killed food aid workers multiple times
I felt from the beginning this was a half ass effort. Publicity stunt that didn’t work.
3 месяца назад
I wouldn't call it a half assed effort. It was an ineffective plan from the beginning but the people who are executing the plan are putting forth maximum effort. Publicity stunt? I guess you could call with that. A lot of people around the country and the world were demanding that "something" be done so the big shots decided to do something, even if they knew it would be ineffective from the beginning.
Someone needs to take a look at the Matson ops leaving the West Coast for Hawaii. A tad over a million POUNDS a day is sick. And the cargo is stacked onshore waiting to either rot or be stolen by guys with guns. What a waste of money and personnel for virtually zero.
My guess is that Biden made the decision to send the pier and was committed to it. But, from a strategic point of view of our ally Israel, they don't want Gaza to be resupplied. So no effort is being made to make this efficient.
Polly Anna here. Maybe the humiliation will motivate the government to address this massive void in our future capabilities. Shoot if we can't quickly put up a functional pier we are probably not ready for a major conflict.
They are being pretty selective about what they put into that $230M dollar amount. When you figure in fuel for the ships, salaries, wear and tear on equipment there is no way in hell that whole schmozz only cost $230M. The true cost will make airborne drops look cheap. Rushed plan, rushed gear...bad outcome.
Small tugs are loaded with causeway. Not sailed across the pond. Thank you for the updates on your channel. 👊 Retired Army Master Mariner / Master Diver
So, they decided to use a tool that wasn't made for this situation in the first place, so, naturally, lets launch an investigation. A news report I read either yesterday or the day before said, one of the problems is once the supplies are moved onto the beach, they're just sitting there. The aid trucks that were moving the stuff inland were getting attacked, so they're having trouble moving it off the beach. If that's true, it wouldn't matter if you were able to move more onto the beach.
Hamas is in bedded in the aid trucks and are using them as cover to attack Israel. Also, Hamas steals all the aid. This was a known disaster before it ever started
@@bosshog8844 ... So you're going to take one high profile incident and extrapolate that out to - Israel is attacking all food trucks? You're smart, wow.
@@blshouse Cant believe there are such imbeciles watching this channel, this pier is an effort to send in humanitarian aid ONLY to a region which is having aid blocked by a US ally, instead of you know, just telling Israel to stop fucking blocking aid and if it refuses, block all non essential military aid to them (which is already forbidden under US law which is currently being brokeN)
Brit here. Yes, it might be a drop in the ocean, but it is $ 230 million dollars that is not available for aid for the Palestinian people or to help homeless people in America. I suppose the best that can be said is that the Democrats tried, whereas the Repugnants would have done bugger all.
3 месяца назад
@@keithhigh7773 It was a scam from the very beginning.
You can't starve a population if you have a reliable delivery system. By pretending this pier was going to be a workable solution, they were able to keep all the humanitarian aid out of this area.
Not sure if you are being "naive" or very cleverly showing what a disaster this devious, desperate scam is... Oh ffs... Does anyone really "think" that the pier has anything to do with "a concern about getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians"?!?!?! When will all the "experts" cut the crap and cut to the chase - this is ALL about trying to get the Palestinians out of the region to clear the way for the full control of the off shore GAS ZONES in a desperate bid by the nazionist/anglo/american/ nato and bankster parasites to retain some hegemony in the region and control of major future energy supplies to their bitch slapped nato stooges in Europe! But like their murderous scam in Ukraine, it is collapsing as well...
Hard to believe our government would pick the least efficient, most expensive and dangerous way to do something. I'm sure the administration didn't have ulterior motives for doing any of this🙄.
It's no worse than a school district that gets four and a half billion dollars a year; still not be able to afford air conditioning or get rid of asbestos.
If the goal was getting stuff into gaza this was a bad plan but I don't know that there are any better ones available. How would you suggest that they get supplies into gaza in a safer, cheaper, more efficient way?
Half a billion dollars wasted, anyone that knows anything about the Navy and Army mobile pier systems knew this was a disaster to begin with. How the flack did anyone not realize this wasn’t going to work and it needless put American Service men and women at risk.
It's a show, of course, and tonnage is gonna be reflected in grams on all the award citations. But I'm proud of all the Army sailors who are having to pull this mission out of thin air. And how DID that tug get there?
Moving stuff by pallet is a standard for us navy operations. Most people are trained and experienced in only pallet operations. Container operations are simply not practical for carrier and replenishment at sea operations that the navy does. So I’m not surprised to see this being continued on this peir even if containers would be more efficient in this case
The recent commemorations of D-Day made much of the Mulberry floating harbours, and how they were set up in a day or two, and handled thousands of tons of supplies daily to keep the allied forces supplied. That was in the English Channel, not the (relatively) calm Mediterranean. Have we just lost the ability to do that?
The mulberries were prefabricated in the UK, and hauled over the Channel. As to the sea state of the Channel, one of the Mulberries was destroyed by a storm a few weeks after it was set up.
Not really, there will have been lots of lessons learnt form this and it will likely inform future developments and capabilities that are developed, you often learn more from relative failures than you do from success. At least they tried.
@@tomriley5790 This was done to appease the Arab population in the US. Given that US troops were not allowed to set their feet on the sand, this pier could not be properly installed and maintained. Great job Biden....And face it, this was just deliveries into the hands of Hamas, since they run the place.
Thanks Sal for another really informative and interesting video. This is what happens when Politicians call the shots, they are not known for taking reality into consideration. Hats off to all the Servicemen that have had to try and make a Politician's fantasy into a reality.
I was always under the impression that the deliverables of this mission was not to move the needle on tons of aid transported, but rather to generate photos/videos of US soldiers doing something for Gazans so that US voters who sympathize with Palestinians can be placated. I’m pretty sure that’s the criterion by which decision on continuing the mission will be made.
@deansawich6250, I'm glad for your post. It most closely matches my sentiment. The episode's live videos show a how hazardous the operation is. The U.S. military designed an inadequate system for proper throughput. The Israeli military further jeopardized the humanitarian aid operation when they used the beach by the pier for a military evacuation. The pier is a worsening political failure. The pier should be shut down safely, to minimize injury or worse, to U.S. servicemen. Political pressure should be applied to Israel, to open the ports for aid to flow at higher throughput.
Good video, neutral, objective analysis, thank you. Is that a ‘willomy pine’ (from Australia) in the background? If so, awesome! Excuse the spelling, please.
I've seen eucalyptus when I was in Israel, the Wollemi Pine, would surprise me, they are native to only a small and specific area of the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney, and access is not permitted to the general public. That said, given how endangered the pine is, they can be purchased from nurseries to help prevent their extinction. Would be interesting to see if they were transported to Gaza in case something happened in Australia that killed the tree off. (sorry for going waaay off topic if you meant a different pine)
@@carneeki Thank you for your concise reply, carneeki, I thought I recognized is from the very rough bark and the rather primitive, disheveled branches and ‘leaves’. I am aware of the protected status of that grove of plant life in Blue Mountains Australia, and I am interested in having a plant of my own when they become available. As far as I know, there are samples at the KEW and at a museum in Hamilton, Ontario Canada.
That operation wasn’t about delivering aid. It was a “show”, failed spectacularly, and will soon disappear down the “memory hole” to avoid how incompetent they were to even think of trying it.
There is a repeated misconception about number of tracks before and after 7 Oct. The number before is tracks carrying everything. Building supply, Manufacturing supply, Food... The number post 7 Oct is just humanitarian aid. e.g food and medical supply.
Sal, very informative particularly with your maritime background. (With tongue-in-cheek) Look out the Senate investigative committee will have you up giving testimony on the latest rounds of political sniping.
@@Onequietvoice Correct that said however what food does come in does go their fighting forces first as is customary in this part of the world. Another example of us supplying our own enemies with war material.
I’m prior Amphibious transport Navy. I noticed two things in your excellent video. One, I’ll take this as all other operations as a Training exercise. The second was the Aid coming from the UAE. One could derive a lot of intelligence from this operation. IMHO. 😎🇺🇸👍🏻
The Emiratis wouldn't be foolish enough to send illicit supplies through that channel, I think. They have plenty of tunnels built by the Egyptians to use for that. But you're right, it's great training but I suspect the outcome of the exercise will be that the military has learned to not use systems in conditions they weren't designed for. Or so I hope.
Nobody is learning anything of value here, other than it sucks to be a marine. Even if they did, they sure as hell won't put that knowledge to good use in the future. The whole operation was a PR stunt designed to distract the population from focusing on complicit US involvement in the Gaza incursion.
Doomed to failure even before it began. Anyone who bothered to ask the weather folks for information about wind, tide, and sea state, would have known not to attempt setting up this pier on that unprotected beachhead. The world watches us embarrass ourselves, and takes note.
Mr Rain It is a requirement set out years ago by Israel. They then turn back an entire container-worth / truckload at a time for any reason whatsoever, in violation of the relevant Geneva Conventions, when a single pallet is deemed "out of order". The USA could force them to back down but is unwilling to challenge Benjamin Netanyahu on the matter.
We do infact have doctrine regarding mobile pier operations. I would call this a failed Beta test. And expect funding to replace this with a more viable system with next year's budget.
A competent US leader, say perhaps a successful real estate construction guy, would have persuaded Israel and possibly Egypt, to let the aid flow through an established port. He probably would have also realized that containers were the way to go. But you gotta go with what you got, at least for now.
14:00 - Your comments reminded me, and I searched and bought the book "Tug Of War", about the author's experiences during WW-II sailing a US fleet tug from the US East Coast, thru Panama, to the South Pacific. Wonderful book that I read many years ago.
*Let us NOT FORGET the, amazing & beautiful, quote that our, very strong & full of life, President Biden gave us regarding the Red Sea, Israel & the Houthi's....* *"We beat the war against MEDICAD!!!"*
Think of all the money they saved by not paying the crews involved hazardous duty pay while sending them into a bonafide war zone! So, we have that going for us.
I always thought it was a bad strategy but I’m sad to see it really didn’t work well. Those people are so desperate for aid I was hoping it would help more.
Then they should stop starting fights with israel, and violating the Treaties they begged for after starting said fights with Israel; better yet they should GTFO of Israel as they have ZERO CLAIM to it.
This was a weird mission from the start. Why make an amphibious landing when Egypt could open a border crossing directly into Gaza? Lots of politics. Big international relations. This one could suspect this pier was just a decoy to avoid the Gaza-Egypt crossing becoming a flashpoint and somewhere someone issuing an ultimatum.
Can’t stack containers high on these vessels. Pallets moved by forklift makes more sense. Especially when the marshaling area is completely full anyways even with the limited throughput achieved and the internal distribution in Gaza is not keeping up.
This is rather less about weather or equipment or ability than it is about politics. Political will would see enough resource - even blockships against the weather! - put into place. BUT the one side can't guarantee safety or accept foreign military ashore, and frankly WANTS to continue the difficulties for it's people. And the other doesn't seem to want to facilitate the use of a proper port eg Ashdod , then onward road distribution.... (And that ignores the central land access and Southern port access from Egypt!) I truly feel sorry for the US Army and Navy here..... professional people - and this is not their fault!! As for Mulberries..... the lesson is that any facility intended for more than a very short (a day or two) term operation requires ENORMOUS planning and support and security - and that means allied political will. Nice update Sal, thanks you.
@@Onequietvoicethey should be happy they got $1 or pallet one? Hamas brought this on themselves and the people of Gaza. And once they even got the aid, they withhold hold it from the people.
Brit here. You are probably right about the political will. All the "heavy lifting" for Mulberries was done in 1942/43/44. All the designs are readily available, and given the time the Gaza pier was in the planning, the concrete caissons could have been fabricated in Cyprus and shipped across. The block ships (gooseberries in Mulberry speak) could have been substituted by more caissons.The Mulberries were designed to handle a much greater rise and fall of tide than 3 feet. Historical note, some concrete caissons are still visible just off the beach in Arromanches, Normandy, France. I live just a few miles from where many caissons were fabricated here on the south coast of England and in this 80th anniversary year of D-Day, we will shortly be erecting a monument commemorating Mulberries and all the people engaged in their manufacture.
@MartyrAlmo Duuude, there are only 4.45 million Muslims in the US. That is about 1.3 PERCENT of the total population. Use Google before you quote a number.
@MartyrAlmo Where do you think the Google numbers come from? That is U.S. Census & immigration data, i.e. those are SELF-REPORTED numbers. Individual Muslim households put their hands up to be counted. Now, the numbers aren't perfect, and they do the Census only every ten years, and do projections between those times, and it isn't going to account for illegal immigration or people that duck the surveys for whatever reason, but it isn't going to be off by "50 to 70 million". That would be every eight American. If you had said 500,000 or a million extra I might have believed you.
As someone who sailed on one of the Montford Point class ships and participated in side by side exercises with the LMSRs, this pier definitely was a waste.
This whole thing was a fool's errand. If we (the US) were going to "do something," then we should not take half-measures to try to look good politically. Want to run a JLOTS mission? Great, send over a MEU/ARG, establish a beachhead (with CG/DDGs parked offshore and B-52/B-1 support on-call for force protection), send the Army/Marines/Seabees necessary to support the pier and the transload area, crank up the MLPs to do the job they were designed for, and move some serious tonnage. If we didn't think the mission was worth the potential risk to our "boots on the ground," then we should stay home. This kind of half-measure nonsense is idiotic. And is what brings us things like Mogadishu/Black Hawk Down. Act. Or don't act. Have the fortitude to make a decision and follow through.
This is honestly worse than I expected, this is ridiculous. Moving PALLETS at a time? Transferring PALLETS multiple times between various vehicles before they touch ground? This is just absurd. "...an investigation is about to be launched into the pier..." - Can't wait to find out who they scapegoat for this one
i find it pretty astounding, with the amount of ground work created to hold the land end of the pier, why not continue and build a land mass into the water (perhaps too deep i would assume) but surely even a short one, (if water deep) might have been easier and cheaper to create and keep adding to while in use, maintain etc, when these costs add up it all becomes pretty fantastic - all i keep thinking is 'Mulbury Harbor' - shifting pallets is one of the most challenging things, you have to reduce the amount of times it is moved to become efficient
The biggest issue isn't the quantity of aid, but the effective distribution of aid. A lot of it gets intercepted by less-needy, more organized groups before it reaches those who most need it. Throwing *more* food at the problem right now will not get any more food to those who actually need it. Ultimately, Gaza needs a functional government again.
Exactly correct. Geez, at least one other person on this thread is sensible. Granted that coming up with a functional gov't in Gaza that is not a threat to the Israelis is a toughie, as the Gazans are indoctrinated from birth to hate Israelis.
This operation is on the same level of incompetence as Jimmy Carter’s aborted attempt at hostage rescue he tried using helicopters during a sand storm.
You said that the cargo that has been delivered is mostly sitting on the beach, waiting for the UN to distribute it. As in, if this operation became much more efficient, it wouldn't matter to the people of Gaza, because it is the UN that is the bottleneck here. Also, I'm sure containers are more efficient than pallets, but can the UN actually handle containers in Gaza?
at least 224 humanitarian personnel have been killed in Gaza during the ongoing conflict... probably 5x more were injured. The UN have an impossible task and they are not the one being a problem in this conflict.
It's kind of hard to distribute food ; when your U.N. workers are busy being terrorists....
3 месяца назад
@@raymondnoel6053 It is well documented that Hamas has thoroughly infiltrated virtually all of the "humanitarian" organizations in Gaza. They essentially work for hamas and provide cover for their fighters, which makes them legitimate targets.
Actually this is amazing the reporter is such a bleeding heart the questions are is why does the USA need to spend the taxpayer money when Egypt can open the border and all the people can flee. Also could you imagine this being done during the Normandy invasion on June 6 , 1944 the Germans would have died laughing. But hey it’s our government just a bunch of geniuses and none of them could run a brothel or liquor store without running it broke.
It would have been far easier to provide humanitarian relief if Egypt and other Arab states had granted temporary asylum to Gazan women, children, and the elderly. Deliveries could have occurred outside the active conflict zone. And it would have undermined Hamas' evil human shield strategy.
Hamas didn’t want it because they can’t hide weapons in the cargo, HAMAS stole 20 million in cash loaded onto a truck every month for 17 years, they have billions and are the richest country in the world when it comes to the balance sheet 😂😂😂😂 🇮🇱
Sal, you called it correctly from the get-go when this operation was announced, what 5 months ago!! You should provide the investigators a copy of your episode from months ago! You're a class act for not saying "I told you so!"
@@lanetatom2701Because this is a political operation, not a logistics operation. This was created by The West Wing of the White House, to satiate the left wing of the Democratic Party. And here we are in July, and the MV Dali has probably moved more cargo. If you actually want to move large bits of Aid? you drive a cargo ship to ports in Egypt and drive across the border.
It was never met to be used on an open coastline but in “protected” waters. This was purely political and meant to gain brownie points, not help. “Hey, look what we’re doing!” You ask anyone who actually put hands on that thing and they will tell you. Thanks Sal!
I am confused. Why can't they ship the supplies into an Egyptian port near Gaza, then truck it to the Egyptian/Gaza border? Is there something I am missing? This seems like a simpler, easier method.
Yes, that would have been the proper way, the down side is that at the time the decision was made, until mid May, Hamas had control over the areas near the Gaza/Egypt border, so Hamas, other groups and local gangs robbed food convoys.
I stated it would fail as soon as it was announced. The heat transfer after dusk over the Sahara desert whips the winds in the Med to over 40kph during the late spring and summer months. The sea state is always 4 to 5 in the summer, at least once a day. This was never meant for open seas, it was designed to replace damaged docks in harbors, and atolls. A elevated pier system driven into the seabed could have been constructed and extended out 2 or 3 kilometers, but would be much more expensive and take months. The US could have simply used the extended pier already existing in Ashdod, as well as the port, and delivered 10x the aid. This stunt was a Biden campaign boast made at the State of the Union, proposed by people who had no idea how it works, and the objections of the Army were ignored.
Great report, Sal. You should share it with Congress, especially the budget committees We are pouring money out with no success or reason. Look at our leadership. .
