Posted on 01/28/2012 3:49:44 PM PST by blam
This New Commando 'Mothership' Is Being Rushed To The Middle East
Robert Johnson
January 28, 2012
The Pentagon is wasting no time in modifying its forces to meet the needs of a more specialized and commando-based military.
The Washington Post reports the Pentagon is fast-tracking the conversion of the 1960s warship USS Ponce to use as a "commando mothership" base for special forces teams in the Middle East.
The re-christened Ponce will hold small Combat Rubber Raiding Craft (Zodiac style boats), and helicopters routinely employed by the SEAL teams that are now becoming famous for their successful clandestine operations.
The news broke through Pentagon procurement documents, and though the Navy has refused to announce where the Ponce will be stationed, military paperwork suggest it will sail the Persian Gulf.
The fact that further documentation says the ship will "support mine countermeasure missions" fuels speculation that the Ponce will be used in the Strait of Hormuz should Iran follow through on its threats to try and shutter the waterway.
The commissioning of this new Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) could signal a return for the SEALs to maritime-focused missions after spending the last decade immersing themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Ponce will serve along with another AFSB previously stationed in the Gulf, the USS Cleveland.
While the Pentagon is wasting no time in getting the SEALs, and the Ponce, to wherever they're going, Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby told FOX News that he denied the Post's claim that they were "moving with unusual haste" in refitting the Ponce.
"While this work is being done in an expeditious fashion," Kirby said, it is not accurate to surmise that this signals a rush to meet some urgent combat requirement."
The Navy SEALs were used this week to recover two
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Yeah, I noticed that also.
Respectfully, read the book, “Nightstalkers” (sic) and you’ll find that we’ve done this before against Iran when they tried to mine that area and it was very effective. The author has about a whole chapter on it.
Last time we didn’t even give the SEALs a fancy boat, but a barge welded with freight crates for cover. SEALs are a trip.
This is a message to Iran. They’ll remember last time. It’s not as bad an idea as it seems on the surface.
I heard this story long ago. Some JO flunked out of whatever school he was attending, and put on his revised dream sheet, “anything but sea duty.”
He was sent to our (then) ally Ethiopia, where he supervised a quonset hut in the desert, where he and a few enlisted men changed giant reel to reel tapes made by their NSA-type antenna farm, and once a week loaded them onto a C-130. That weekly visit by the Hercules was their only contact with the outside world, other than via radio waves.
Everything I was on was 10,000 tons or so, except the Valley Forge LPH-8, 27,000 tons, but it was a WWII Essex class CV prior to being converted to LPH.
Coronado LPD 10,000 tons (sister ship to the USS Ponce)
Alamo LSD 6,880 tons
Paul Revere LPA 16,828 tons
Iwo Jima LPH-2 10,717 tons
Okinawa LPH-3 10,717 tons
Hard to remember.
Mine countermeasures? DOLPHINs.
I suspect they are the actual reason to have a dedicated platform. Not SEALs.
“Hard to remember.”
I know what you mean. I was on the Alamo in 1969. Did a landing in P-5 Amtracks north of DaNang off the Alamo.
I was last on the Coronado in 1978.
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Looks like I’ve been having WAY too much FUN!.
Sounds plausible. I always thought it was funny. It sure wasn’t sea duty.
Remember GNS? The unofficial motto of the amphibians.
GNS?
I was with the grunts (and later with the ‘wing).
My job was to track mud into all the corridors & compartments, spend a week or two sweeping swabbing & polishing, then hit the beach again to start the whole process all over.
Heck the Air Force is still flying planes built a minimum of 9 years before I was commissioned, most of them 10+ years earlier. Some of them are flown by the grandchildren of the first generation of pilots to fly them. Not just the same type of airplane, the same airplane by tail number.
B-52H. Last one rolled off the Boeing line in 1964.
Gator Navy Sucks.
Gator Navy (Marine’s point of view)- It beats walking or swimming to get to your destination, the chow was usually great, no one was shooting at you and you were out of the rain & mud.
Of course, someone was always wanting your troop compartment deck swept, swabbed & polished three times a day.
“Thanks for the lift, squids!”
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