Army watercraft used to assemble the humanitarian pier in Gaza have been loaded onto a transport ship and are preparing to head back to the East Coast, Army officials confirmed to USNI News on Tuesday.
According to Army photos provided to USNI News, LCUs were loaded onto MV Ocean Jazz, which is under contract to move the ships back to Virginia, where the craft will return to their homeport at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., next month.
The watercraft are assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) that were dispatched in March along with Navy and Maritime Administration personnel and vessels to build a water route for humanitarian assistance into Gaza as part of a $230 million joint logistics over-the-shore operation, also known as JLOTS.
The three Runnymede-class landing craft were loaded aboard Ocean Jazz over the weekend while the ship was pierside in Cádiz, Spain, according to the photos provided to USNI News. A fourth LCU is underway on a transport ship to Virginia, an Army official told USNI News. The 31 soldiers assigned to the LCUs flew home instead of staffing the watercraft during the journey.
It’s unclear which ships were loaded aboard Ocean Jazz, but the Army initially deployed the LCUs USAV Monterrey (LCU-2030), USAV Matamoros (LCU-2026) and USAV Wilson Wharf (LCU-2011) from Eustis in March.
Two larger General Frank S. Besson-class logistics support vessels – USAV Frank S. Besson (LSV-1) and USAV SP4 James A. Loux (LSV-6) – deployed from Eustis as part of the Army response, but returned to Virginia on their own power in August. As of Tuesday, both ships were pierside at their homeport, according to ship tracker Marine Traffic. A third, USAV Charles P. Gross (LSV-5), is under repair in the Canary Islands and expected to depart soon, Army officials told USNI News.
The journey home for the LCUs will be much quicker than the month-long transit to the Eastern Mediterranean. The flat-bottom craft have a top speed of about 10 knots and are only designed to self-deploy at long distances as a contingency, a former Army mariner told USNI News earlier this year. In contrast, the MARAD cargo ship MV Roy P. Benavidez (T-AKR-306) was able to reach the Eastern Mediterranean in about two weeks, according to the USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker.
The Army chose to transport the LCUs on Ocean Jazz not only to speed up the trip, but also to reduce the risk of the ships getting damaged due to rough weather in the North Atlantic.
The craft are due back on the East Coast sometime in November, USNI News understands.
Moving the LCUs comes as the Government Accountability Office released a report saying the Army’s watercraft mission capable rate had dropped from about 75 percent in 2020 to about 35 percent in 2024.
“The Army has struggled to address a series of longstanding maintenance challenges with its watercraft fleet. Using handwritten systems to manage maintenance has adversely affected the fleet’s readiness,” reads the report.
The service is drafting a revised watercraft modernization strategy.
