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LONDON, Nov 1: The US navy is seeking more merchant ships to carry a large quantity of ammunition and additional pieces of armour to the Gulf for arrival this month and next month, shipping tender documents show.
The navy has also placed an order to shift quantities of ammunition between Gulf ports, evidence of more pre-positioning, as the United Nations moves closer to a new resolution on disarming Iraq.
One of the orders showed the military sealift command (MSC) had been seeking a vessel to move 550 containers of ammunition and explosives from the east coast of the United States to four ports in the Red Sea and the Gulf.
“That’s a big chunk of ammo,” said one shipping source who has chartered ammunition ships for the British ministry of defence. He estimated the vessel was capable of carrying up to 10,000 tons.
The MSC is a branch of the US navy charged with transporting armour and military supplies for the US armed forces.
A spokeswoman for the MSC in Washington, Trish Larson, confirmed the original order but said the requirement had now fallen to 319 containers.
Larson declined to comment further on the quantity of ammunition being moved to the Gulf.
AMMO SHIPS: In shipping industry terms, the movement of 319 so-called twenty-foot-container equivalent units (TEUs) is small.
The largest freighters can carry up to 7,000 TEUs, but moving ammunition and explosives is done on a far smaller scale.
For safety reasons ammunition-carrying ships require special ventilation, temperature control and fire-fighting equipment and additional features, experts say.
The MSC confirmed it was seeking a roll-on-roll-off merchant vessel to carry 2,600 square metres of “rolling stock and track vehicles” from northern Europe to the Gulf this month
The latest commercial orders bring the known number of merchant ships requested to move tanks, helicopters and other military supplies to the Gulf to eight.
That is in addition to the defence department’s own massive sealift capability, some of which is anchored at the British base of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, within a few days’ sail of the Gulf.
Separately, the MSC had been seeking a ship to shift 197 containers of ammunition weighing some 2,700 tons between one unidentified Gulf port and two others, further evidence of pre-positioning activity.
MSC’s Larson said a decision had now been taken to move the quantity on a government-owned as opposed to merchant ship.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Friday Russia and the four other UN Security Council permanent members had moved closer towards agreement on a new resolution aimed at disarming Iraq which Washington suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction.
But, he said, “serious differences” still had to be worked out.—Reuters
