We have a floating pier off the coast of the Gaza Strip which was intended to greatly increase the amount and pace of humanitarian aid to Gazan civilians during the ongoing Hamas war against Israel. It took weeks to get the components sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and then along the length of the Mediterranean Sea to that Gazan coast. Those weeks included delays enroute (and at the start) caused by equipment failure, both in some of the components and in the ships transporting the components.

Once assembled and in more-or-less operation, the volume of traffic was much lower than expected, and under heavy Med seas (heavy for the Med, the seas weren’t the raging high waves of the Atlantic), the pier broke apart with a section being pushed across the remaining gap between the end of the pier and the actual shore (a gap that exists by design) up onto the shore. A ship sent to catch the pier section before it grounded also wound up grounded in the shallow waters near the shore. It took some weeks to repair the damage and reopen the pier.

Now, in anticipation of further heavy seas, this pier has been preemptively dismantled.

This is the level of capability we have in our military to conduct post-forced landing resupply while our troops remain engaged, either still on/near the beach or farther inland? I hope not. I hope this floating pier is not typical of our ability conduct over-the-beach resupply, especially while under fire, but I’m not sanguine about it.