Lord Businessman II: No, there will be shots fired at them, almost assuredly

This is good but also kind of terrifying.

During his State of the Union address, President Biden will order the U.S. military to establish a port in Gaza so more humanitarian aid can reach Palestinians.

Biden to order US military to construct port in Gaza to increase aid flowwww.politico.com “We're not planning for this to be an operation that would require U.S. boots on the ground,” said a senior administration official.

RE: "terrifying"

Playing out a scenario here: the US says enough is enough and lands San Antonios full of aid on the Gazan shore. US Marines with tight rules of engagement guard the shipment to ensure it isn't looted. There is an incident and a marine enlistedis killed. What happens next?

USN/USMC is basically going to get to dress rehearse an entire amphibious assault minus the shooting part.

Navy command is probably rock-hard over getting to test whatever our modern portable harbor solution is

No, there will be shots fired at them, almost assuredly

Like this is nice and all as a plan but this is over at the first Hamas sharpshooter

Mortars are easier.

Negotiations involving Hamas & the USA has been ongoing. So the admin has some idea whether Hamas wants the food to come in *for now* But very risky, yes

Famously trustworthy counter-party Hamas

Maybe they got Hamas not to interfere with ships docking & unloading, but distribution is going to be a nightmare. Hamas isn't the only armed group in Gaza. I wouldn't drive one of those trucks into Gaza City.

Right. It doesn't sound like the US will be doing land distribution but it won't be easy for any organization already in Gaza, either. Nobody is maintaining order now.

Hamas does. Does every individual who is part of Hamas know this, agree, and understand what agreement looks like? Like, leaving aside whether Hamas the entity can be trusted, I'm guessing the number of hotheads who hate America > 0

(That's probably also true of the IDF, otoh the IDF is probably more disciplined, otoh all it takes is one guy one tine)

I imagine, grimly, that that is part of the equation

Given the recent flour massacre it could just as easily be an IDF sniper

certainly a thing I am afraid of

We;re air dropping aid because we can't land Chinooks because Hamas will clip them, you understand that right

My honest answer here is that there's specific tactical considerations to this I haven't thought of because it's not my job to, and I have to assume everything I can think of has been anticipated by USN/USMC general staff. All we have is a barest snippet of news and no details.

Like, where exactly the port is built is surely going to change the danger.

Once we get more detail we can lose our minds about the danger in specific, for now I'm stick with vaguely terrified of the downside risk.

There seems to be an actual marina on the coast in the north part of Gaza. (Heartbreaking how tiny a place it is!) It might be done there; it might also be done somewhere north of that. It's possible some of those places are not there, but the marina seems to have been built up landfill.

a thing to keep in mind here also is that the truck convoy plan has a very recent triple digit body count

even if in the abstract truck convoys are the way to go, they need protection, IDF is the only game in town for protection, and IDF just demonstrated ruinous, murderous inability to provide that protection safely

That's part of it, but also you can get more aid on the ground faster by rolling it out the back of a C-130/C-17 with a parachute.

if the Z's dont first.... 👆🏼

It's possible is some sort of carrot for a ceasefire, and wont actually happen until it goes through.

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