Washington: The Pentagon is rushing to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East as tensions rise with Iran, Al Qaida in Yemen and Somali pirates, among other threats.
In response to requests from the US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, the Navy is converting an ageing warship it had planned to decommission into a makeshift staging base for the commandos. Unofficially dubbed a ‘mothership', the floating base could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEALs, procurement documents show.
Special Operations Forces are a key part of the President Barack Obama administration's strategy to make the military leaner and more agile as the Pentagon confronts at least $487 billion (Dh1.79 trillion) in spending cuts over the next decade. Lieutenant Commander Mike Kafka, a spokesman for the Navy's Fleet Forces Command, declined to elaborate on the floating base's purpose or to say where it will be deployed in the Middle East.
Other Navy officials acknowledged that they were moving with unusual haste to complete the conversion and send the mothership to the region by early summer. Navy documents indicate that it could be headed to the Arabian Gulf, where Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz. A market survey proposal from the Military Sealift Command, dated December 22 and posted online, states that the floating base needed to be delivered to the Gulf.
— Washington Post
