Biden’s floating pier off Gaza coast officially labeled a dud

A Defense Department report revealed a serious lack of training and other gaps led to $31 million in damaged American equipment, injuries, and one death.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The short-lived American floating pier built last year off the Gaza coast to enable massive deliveries of humanitarian aid by the Biden administration was officially labeled a dud Tuesday in Washington.

The report by the Defense Department Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) pulled no punches in slamming the ill-preparedness of the troops ordered to build, use and maintain the $230 million pier that was officially in existence for three months, from May to July 2024.

Operation Neptune Solace was marked by “low equipment mission-capable rates and low manning and training levels” of both its the Army and Navy personnel, it said.

The two services also “did not organize, train, and equip to a common joint standard,” it charged.

This led to 27 watercraft and other equipment needing repairs to the tune of $31 million, the report found, as “Army- and Navy-specific equipment, including watercraft, piers, and causeways, as well as command, control, and communications systems, was not interoperable.”

The report also criticized those who designed the pier, saying that they “did not fully consider mission-specific information requirements, such as beach conditions, average sea states, and other factors.”

All this resulted in the floating dock being in actual use for only 20 days.

It had to be dismantled and rebuilt twice due to the danger of high seas common to the area in the summer.

At one point in May, four boats that were part of the pier’s support system broke off, and a few days later, sections of the floating causeway were severed, all due to bad weather, forcing operations to shut down while repairs were made.

There was a human cost as well, with three American troops hurt while working on the pier, one of whom later died of his injuries.

The findings supplemented a negative report issued by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of the Inspector General a month after the pier was dismantled for the final time and the mission declared complete.

While the military said with satisfaction that some 900 metric tons of aid had been delivered through the pier to UN warehouses for distribution, this was less than a third of what had been envisioned, according to USAID’s August report.

It was also not known how much of that aid actually ended up in the hands of ordinary Gazans, it said, noting “multiple instances of looting after aid was collected from the beach and transported into Gaza, attacks on … warehouses, and drivers being detained or shot.”