A rare request to support Israel in their military campaign, as reported by Reuters.The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tonnes of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show.The article goes on to note a ship was tendered back in December to carry "989 standard 20-foot containers from Sunny Point, North Carolina to Ashdod" and would need to be capable of "carrying 5.8 million pounds (2.6 million kg) of net explosive weight." This was probably the ship used to deliver the orders in late 2008 for guided bombs used by the IAF, including the bunker busters used to strike the tunnel systems that have been widely discussed in the news.
The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as "ammunition" on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
A "hazardous material" designation on the manifest mentions explosive substances and detonators, but no other details were given.
"Shipping 3,000-odd tonnes of ammunition in one go is a lot," one broker said, on condition of anonymity.
"This (kind of request) is pretty rare and we haven't seen much of it quoted in the market over the years," he added.
The U.S. Defense Department, contacted by Reuters on Friday in Washington, had no immediate comment.
In thinking about it, we just got done moving an incredible amount of ammunition to Israel back in December that was recently delivered, and yet Israel is already looking for two more shipments of more ammunition? In terms of weight, at least according to the Reuters article, the amount of ammunition needed to be shipped is enormous.
That kind of gives the impression Israel is stocking up for the long haul.
But that isn't where this story ends, unconfirmed reports as of a few hours ago suggest Greece is barring any shipments using their ports to deliver weapons to Israel. Should get interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment