U.S. orders large volume of ammunition to Gulf

Reuters
November 1, 2002
By Stefano Ambrogi

The U.S. Navy is seeking more merchant ships to carry a large quantity of ammunition and additional pieces of armor to the Gulf for arrival in November and December, shipping tender documents seen by Reuters 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 Defense. He estimated the vessel was capable of carrying up to 10,000 tons.

MSC is a branch of the U.S. Navy charged with transporting armor and military supplies for the U.S. 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.

"It's just closed (the tender) but nothing has been awarded yet. The requirement is slightly less now -- it's a fluid process," she said.

Larson declined to comment further on the quantity of ammunition being moved to the Gulf.

The vessel carrying ammunition is due to load on October 31 and to discharge at the various ports between November 19 and December 3.

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 28,000 square feet of "rolling stock and track vehicles" from northern Europe to the Gulf in November.

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 Department of Defense (news - web sites)'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.

Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Friday Russia and the four other U.N. Security Council permanent members had moved closer toward 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.

 
_____
Nieuwe Oorlog 2002 | Ander Nieuws week 45