Report: Pentagon plans floating military base in Mideast

[Judi Lynn]

January 27, 2012 6:56 PM
Report: Pentagon plans floating military base in Mideast

As tensions rise between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear ambitions, the Pentagon is preparing to bring a decommissioned assault ship back into duty for possible deployment to the Mideast

The plan, first reported in the Washington Post, would create a floating base for commando teams who might deployed against Somali pirates, and other threats. The action is also a possible counter move for Iran's continued threats to shut down a key oil pipeline, the Strait of Hormuz.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports the Navy is planning to convert a decommissioned amphibious ship, the Ponce, to be used as the mothership. It is expected to be ready to head to the area by June 1.

The amphibious assault ship Ponce had been scheduled to be decommissioned after a 40-year career. In December, it returned to Norfolk Naval Station for the decommissioning. The Ponce was led by 28 commanding officers, crewed by more than 18,400 sailors, and has transported more than 24,500 Marines.

More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57367813-503543/report-pentagon-plans-floating-military-base-in-mideast/

[cstanleytech]

1. Makes sense kinda especially for regions where we might not have any bases

close but they really should imo consider closing atleast some of our other overseas bases to pay for it like say all the ones in europe.

[Gigibagigi]

8. I think

we should consider closing all bases and mind our own businesses

[cstanleytech]

10. That idea (Isolationism) has much in common with Trickle-down economics in that

both have been tried and both were failures incase you were unaware of it.

[ronnie624]

17. Not isolationism.

Cooperation is needed from all of humanity (or most of it, anyway) to face the coming challenges. Positive relationships cannot be developed through militarism.

[cstanleytech]

19. Oh I agree we should try to work harder at cooperating with countries however this isnt

a perfect world and until that changes we do need to have some military for defense (though we do need to reign our spending in on it as its silly imo for us to be spending 6 times more than china and russia combined are spending) and that includes some defense around the world since we have to have trade for things like food not to mention raw materials such as rubber.
After all this isnt star trek where we have replicators to instantly create such things.

[fascisthunter]

13. you can pay for it

[cstanleytech]

15. Cute, to bad for you though that you decided to insert a smartass comment and ignore

the part where I said it kinda makes sense to have this though to pay for it we should close most if not all our bases (which imo havent been needed since the USSR broke up) in Europe.
Ahh well, you have my sympathies.

[onethatcares]

2. the coolest thing about the entire thing is

why even give a shit about how those countries feel about the U.S. Military just reaching out to kick their asses?

We go in, take their oil and resourses, kill their families and then we leave them in shambles, nothing for them to get upset about at all.

What country wouldn't appreciate that kind of assistance with the way they run?

gauddammit, what is up with the U.S. is being the biggest bully on the block, meanwhile China is buying land, building schools, and every fucking thing we should be doing

I'm getting really tired of our diplomacy or am I missing something here?

[Orrex]

3. Perhaps they can rechristen it The Titanic

[Blue_Tires]

4. Naturally, there isn't a single math-challenged teabag congresscritter

quoted in the story bitching about the deficit or how we'll ever be able to afford this naked contractor cash grab...

But the Post Office? End of the world
Stimulus? End of the world
NASA? End of the world
Social Security? End of the world
President takes the 747 anywhere? End of the world
Green technologies? End of the world
and the list goes on....

[dreamnightwind]

7. Good point about the Tea Partiers

They have no problem spending money on the military.

This looks more to me like a resource grab than a contractor cash grab. Well, not a resource grab but giving military backing to uninterrupted resource extraction.

[Gigibagigi]

9. Mm.

I do not think all Tea Parties agree on spending money on the military

[The Sushi Bandit]

5. Wait! We have them already... they are called

Aircraft Carriers and LHD's! The Ponce was use as a command and control center for 20 plus years (see Jane's ships)

[Joe Shlabotnik]

6. +1 beat me to it.

Unbelievable amount of tightly coordinated-Hell can be unleashed from one of these babies. They're not your grandfathers aircraft carriers at all. Throw in a couple of submarines for added punch.

[TheDebbieDee]

11. I posted about this on the other DU site............

But I think the idea of a temporary floating military base is PURE genius!

No longer would our government have to get into bed with a foreign nation just to be able put a staging area near a hot-spot.

We could build these temporary floating bases to be as large or as small as we need them. We could use them for purposes that were other than military: transportation points, supply depots, etc.

We could easily defend them with submarines, ships and aircraft........this floating base idea is really outside-the-box thinking. And the biggest threat to the floating base would be a tsunami - but how often do tsunamis occur?

[cstanleytech]

16. Time for some education, tsunamis have almost zero effect on ships at sea only when their in port or

shallow water would their be any real risk from a tsunamis.
Unless of course you are thinking of the hollywood 2012 movie style tsunamis which look awesome.

[DCBob]

12. Might be a fairly easy target for a submarine attack.

But the general idea seems promising. There would be no sovereign territorial issues.

[fascisthunter]

14. talk about power going to our country's head

can you imagine another country doing the same thing off our shores?! Really fucking stupid.... just no respect.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. 'Ponce'? There's an unfortunate name for a ship

Oxford English Dictionary:

derogatory slang (chiefly Brit.).

1. A man who lives on money earned by another person (esp. a woman); a kept man. Also: a person (usually a man) who lives off a prostitute's earnings; a pimp.

2. depreciative. An effeminate or affected man or boy; (also) a male homosexual.

I presume it's named after 'Ponce de Leon', but they could at least have kept the 'de Leon' ...

[cstanleytech]

20. From the wiki site on it

"USS Ponce (LPD-15), an Austin-class amphibious transport dock, is the only ship of the United States Navy that is named for Ponce in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which in turn was named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, the first governor of Puerto Rico and European discoverer of Florida."