Citing unspecified procurement documents, the newspaper said the Navy is converting an aging warship it had planned to decommission into a makeshift staging base for the commandos in response to requests from the US Central Command.
Unofficially dubbed a “mothership,” the floating base could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEALs, the report said.
Special operations forces are a key part of President Barack Obama’s strategy to make the military leaner and more agile as the Pentagon confronts at least $487 billion in spending cuts over the next decade, the paper noted.
Mike Kafka, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, refused to elaborate on the floating base’s purpose or to say where, exactly, it will be deployed in the Middle East, the paper said.
Other Navy officials acknowledged that they were moving with unusual haste to complete the conversion and send the mothership to the region by early summer, the report said.
Navy documents indicate that it could be headed to the Arabian Gulf, where Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, The Post noted. Documents do not specify a location but say the mothership would be used to “support mine countermeasure” missions.
Defense officials have said that if Iran did attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz, it would rely on mines to obstruct the waterway.
Adding the mothership would do relatively little to bolster US maritime power overall, but it could play an instrumental role in secretive commando missions offshore, The Post observed.
