Amazingly enough, with all the delays and ship breakdowns, the floating Gaza Pier is now completed and operational.

JUST IN: U.S. Central Command has released photos of the temporary pier in Gaza pic.twitter.com/jlDz0eJTgX

— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) May 16, 2024

The question is, how long before Hamas starts taking pot shots at the personnel operating the pier?

No, that’s not a trick question. Hamas has already taken a few pot shots while the pier was being constructed. How secure will it be once it is fully operational and our military forces along with that of the Israeli forces get fired upon? 

The Gaza pier been pushed in to place. pic.twitter.com/cwXueETYdV

— Britsky (@TBrit90) May 16, 2024

Don’t get me wrong, what was accomplished is something that very few in the military world today know how to do. 

JLOTS is a feat of military engineering, in which 1,000 soldiers and sailors first build a massive floating platform at sea, where ships carrying screened cargo from Cyprus can be offloaded.

Trucks are then ferried to the trident pier by vessels that are essentially motorized pier sections, and driven from there onto the beach, where U.N. relief workers will oversee distribution.

It has to be a pier that can withstand not only the weight of the trucks themselves, but also the additional loads of food, supplies, fuel, and more. Oh, and drive the pier w/o having a truck take a dive into the drink! 

Oh, but according to the Pentagon, everything will go smooth as silk once the operation gets going. 

Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters that the U.S. believes there will be no backups in the distribution of the aid, which is being coordinated by the United Nations.

The U.N., however, said fuel imports have all but stopped and this will make it extremely difficult to deliver the aid to Gaza’s people, all 2.3 million of whom are in acute need of food and other supplies after seven months of intense fighting between Israel and Hamas.

“We desperately need fuel,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said. “It doesn’t matter how the aid comes, whether it’s by sea or whether by land, without fuel, aid won’t get to the people.”

Singh said the issue of fuel deliveries comes up in all conversations with the Israelis.

I can just picture it now. Some Hamas terrorist will lie in wait and launch an attack targeting trucks on the pier. If they are lucky, or informed, they’ll zap a fuel truck, thus blowing up the pier. Now that would be one helluva back up in aid delivery wouldn’t it? 

The DoD keeps reiterating that no troops will be on the ground, as if that makes them somehow less of a target to Hamas and other terrorists roaming the area.

CENTCOM continued: “As part of this effort, no U.S. troops entered Gaza. Trucks carrying humanitarian assistance are expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days. The United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution into Gaza.”

Though no militant group has yet issued a direct threat against the pier, the coastal location intended for the structure was hit by mortars in April. The attack on a “marshaling area” for the pier caused minimal damage and took place while U.S. ships involved in the operation were offshore, Pentagon spokesperson Patrick Ryder said at the time.

Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah—both members of the informal Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” engaged against Israel, the U.S. and their allies—have both threatened to target American forces if they become more involved in the fighting in the Gaza Strip or along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Seriously?!! The ‘troops never enter Gaza or set foot on the ground’ thing is totally bogus. They would have us believe that either UN – make that UNRWA Hamas fools – or ordinary civilians would just waltz over to the waiting vehicles and drive off the pier into Gaza? Not happening. 

We do have boots on the ground with the building of this pier. There is just no way around that fact. 

As much as I admire the capabilities of our soldiers to put this pier together so quickly under massive amounts of pressure, it’s what happens next that worries me. 

Typically, a JLOTS deployment would follow a Marine Corps amphibious assault on a given location, he said, referring to JLOTS as “LOTS” for short.

“Forced entry, they secure the ground and they move inland and create standoff,” he said. “After the Marine Corps provides the ground or the space, the Army then moves in for a long, enduring operations, where we bring in LOTS capability.”

“It’s usually not the kinetic environment we see now in Gaza,” the officer added.

Already, aid groups ashore were mortared last month, and Hamas has said the group will resist any foreign presence associated with the project, The Associated Press reported.

So, the Gaza Pier is constructed yet everyone involved is a sitting duck. Good times!

Biden promised, pinky swear style, that there would be no boots on the ground in Israel with this effort. 

The fact is, with this pier getting completed and the ferrying of supplies to the citizens of Gaza is supposed to work out well, provided Hamas doesn’t show up and throw monkey wrenches into the entire proceedings by coopting the supplies for themselves.

The Gaza Pier is operational. How long that will last? It depends upon what Hamas decides to do.

Feature Photo Credit: Gaza Pier via X as released by CentComm, cropped and modified