What will the finished project look like?

Imagine standing on a beach and there is a long plank that one can walk out from the shoreline of the beach over the water. This leads to a large, floating pier that is surrounded by boats.

The components of this Gaza project are similar: a floating pier, an 1,800-foot-long (549-meter-long) causeway attached to the shore, boats pulled up alongside to help with sorting and moving food, and barges to transport aid from the pier.

Large ships must be able to unload supplies onto the pier, including tons of food, water and medicine. Smaller boats will need to get the aid closer to the shore because Gaza has lost the functions of its port, and its waters are too shallow for large vessels. The new pier is the point between those two activities.

The Pentagon has erected temporary piers for decades, both for military support during wartime and emergency humanitarian assistance in times of conflict.

This work is done through a 30-year-old program that integrates the Navy and the Army. But as far back as World War II, the United States’ Allied forces landing on Normandy was aided by the construction of a floating dry dock pier.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991 – a military operation to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait – the U.S. created a floating pier for military purposes because the Iraqis had mined Kuwait’s port and the U.S. often resupplied troops on the ground via the sea.

Most often, floating piers are built to create a port after or during a crisis.

The U.S. built a floating pier in the Port-au-Prince Bay following the 2010 Haiti earthquake. This allowed them to get food and medicine to help humanitarian agencies that could not travel on badly damaged roads get food and medicine to civilians in need.

The U.S. military continues to build floating piers in training missions, like one it temporarily constructed off South Korea in 2015 to test cargo deliveries in the event of a crisis.

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