US sending aircraft carrier to protect Israel

The US decision to redirect the USS Abraham Lincoln to the Middle East away from Asia leaves the West Pacific dangerously open until a newly refurbished aircraft carrier arrives in Japan later this year, according to Nikkei Asia. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, operating near Guam, to head to the Middle East to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

This move came less than two months after Austin directed the Roosevelt, which also had been on a Pacific deployment, to replace the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group in the Red Sea. The Roosevelt will return to the US, and the Eisenhower already has done so.

The Lincoln and the Roosevelt had been stationed in the Asia-Pacific to cover for the short-term absence of a Japan-based carrier.

Bryan McGrath, a retired surface warship officer and founding managing director of consultancy The FerryBridge Group, said the U.S. Navy's absence in the region reinforces to Chinese President Xi Jinping "the fact that the United States of America does not have enough naval power to cover its requirements."

Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, said the Pentagon has concluded that "the situation in the Western Pacific is at least stabilizing for now."

Koh said this is based on South China Sea tensions winding down since China and the Philippines agreed to a provisional arrangement, and with Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula "while still tense, at least under control."

But if a full-scale armed conflict does break out in Asia, "US military power projection capabilities in the Western Pacific are expected to suffer from the absence of a carrier strike group," he said. "Land-based assets are useful, but they do lack the versatility offered by naval forces, and US Navy carrier strike groups constitute the linchpin of such assets."

The shift in military posture is intended to "increase support for the defense of Israel," deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement on Monday. Iran has vowed to retaliate after Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed last week in Tehran.

Plans shared by the US Navy to Nikkei Asia confirmed that a "carrier gap" in the West Pacific was emerging. The USS Carl Vinson, which was assumed by security observers to move westward after being in Hawaii for the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise, instead will head directly back to San Diego, a spokesperson said on Monday.

The next carrier to be deployed to the West Pacific will be the USS George Washington, when it arrives in Yokosuka, Japan, to be the forward-deployed carrier replacing the USS Ronald Reagan, the spokesperson said. The navy has previously said the George Washington is expected to arrive in the autumn. 

US pier constructed off Gaza broken apart

The temporary pier constructed by the US military to transport aid into Gaza broke apart and sustained damage in heavy seas on Tuesday in a major blow to the US-led effort to create a maritime corridor for humanitarian supplies into the war-torn enclave, the Pentagon said.

The pier was damaged and sections of the pier need rebuilding and repairing, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said on Tuesday. The pier will be removed from its location on the Gaza coast over the next 48 hours and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where US Central Command will carry out repairs, Singh said. The repairs will take more than a week, further delaying the effort to get the maritime corridor fully operating.

Part of the pier, which consists of a narrow causeway to drive aid into Gaza and a wider parking area to drop off supplies transported by ship, had disconnected on Sunday, the officials said. The parking area will have to be reconnected to the causeway before the pier can be used again.

The damage, first reported by NBC News, occurred three days after heavy seas forced two small US Army vessels to beach in Israel, according to US Central Command, while another two vessels broke free of their moorings and were anchored near the pier.

“I believe most of our soldiers were able to remain on the vessels and still are currently on them,” Singh said during Tuesday’s Pentagon press briefing. “And ... within the next 24 or 48 hours, the Israeli Navy will be helping push those vessels back and hopefully they’ll be fully operational by then.”

The pier, which cost US$320 million, had only begun operating on May 17 when heavy seas forced the maritime shipments to stop one week later on May 24, two days before part of the pier disconnected. It is unclear when shipments will resume.

The temporary pier, called the Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS), requires very good sea conditions to operate. CNN reported previously that JLOTS can only be operated safely in a maximum of 3-foot waves and winds less than approximately 15 miles per hour.

Heavier sea conditions delayed the deployment of the pier for several weeks, as the system sat docked in the Israeli port of Ashdod waiting for favorable conditions.

The US has stressed that the temporary pier is only meant to augment humanitarian shipments going through the land crossings between Israel and Gaza.

On Thursday, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of US Central Command, said 820 metric tons of aid had been delivered through the pier to the Gaza beach, where the United Nations was responsible for distributing it to the Palestinian population. The Pentagon said Thursday that more than 1,000 metric tons of aid had been delivered before the temporary pier had to halt operations.

Daniel Dieckhaus, the director of USAID’s Levant Response Management Team, told reporters Thursday that there were “thousands and thousands of tons” of aid waiting in Cyprus to be delivered through the maritime corridor. But those shipments are now paused with the temporary pier inoperable