The Washington Post reported Saturday that it had come across the procurement order to convert an old Navy warship—one that was about to be decommissioned—into a floating base for commandos.
It said the base was designed as a home for high-speed boats and helicopters that the Navy SEALs commonly use.
The SEALs are the force used to kill Osama bin Laden last year in a covert operation in Pakistan. SEALs were also used last month to attack rebels deep inside Somalia and to rescue two hostages they were holding.
One document the Post found online said the floating base should be delivered to the Persian Gulf. Another said it would be used to “support mine countermeasure” missions. That suggested the US Navy might be moving quickly to be in a better position to counter any effort by Iran to mine the Strait of Hormuz.
But the US Navy wouldn’t need a floating base for that purpose. It could operate more easily and cheaply from land bases on the south side of the Persian Gulf, where it has access to bases in every country.
Military specialists suggested a few reasons the Navy might prefer a floating base.
For one thing, the Navy would not need any permission from a host country to launch an operation from a base floating in international waters. That would suggest an interest in having the capability to launch covert operations against Iran without involving a host country in any way.
Another possibility is that the floating base will have super-secret technology and/or operating methods that the US Navy would not want a host nation to see.
A third possibility is that the base is intended to be deployed adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz with the SEALs monitoring the strait 24 hours a day to nip any effort at mining in the bud. This is the most likely rationale, one specialist said.
He noted that when Iran mined the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war, the US Navy was caught unawares and had to scramble. Eventually, the Navy set up a floating base in the Persian Gulf that was use to monitor all Iranian activity in the waterway and send out troops and helicopters to intervene whenever the Navy saw suspicious activity by Iran.
That floating base proved very effective by keeping US Navy forces right in the middle of the area they were trying to monitor and patrol 24/7 and not stuck off to the side on shore.
A Navy spokesman declined to tell the Post exactly where the floating base would be deployed—beyond saying the Middle East—or to describe its purpose.
Other Navy officials told the Post the service was moving quickly and wanted the floating base in place by early summer.
The old ship being used for the floating base is the USS Ponce, a 41-year-old amphibious transport docking ship named after a city in Puerto Rico. Last year, the Navy announced that the Ponce would be decommissioned in March. Last Tuesday, it posted a request for bids to refit the old ship as an “afloat forward staging base.”