The U.S. is sending more warships and marines to the Middle East amid the war with Iran. Three U.S. Navy warships, including the USS Boxer from San Diego, and 2,500 marines from Camp Pendleton, have been deployed.
“The ship provides, you know, uh, basically, it's like a mini-aircraft carrier,” Hal Kempfer, a retired Marine intelligence officer, said. “But it also has a well deck. So, what it can do is it can launch these vehicles or amphibious, like our, you know, uh, we have a, a variety of amphibious vehicles are on it. They can be launched directly into the water.”
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The USS Boxer’s website explains that the ship is designed to bring Marines and their equipment to shore on deployment and support them on their mission.
“This allows rapid ship-to-shore movement back and forth, which means that it's not just putting the Marines, putting the force ashore,” Kempfer said. “But it's how fast, fast we can build up combat power ashore to push in and to uh go in and take more territory faster and quicker.”
2,500 Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), based at Camp Pendleton, are also being deployed. Last week, 2,200 Marines from Twentynine Palms were deployed to the region.
“It doubles the amount of ground force capability, but a MEU is a complete air-ground package. It comes with a composite squadron,” Kempfer said. “They can do a variety of things, attack, airlift, a lot of different things, very robust combat service support element, a very capable command element with a lot of things that they can do, which really is a force multiplier in terms of the actual forces that are out there.”
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Kempfer answered what message this increase in assets in the Middle East sends to the rest of the world amid this war with Iran.
"Everybody's looking at what we're doing, and everybody's sitting there saying, well, I guess the US is more engaged. It also increases the likelihood,” Kempfer said. “Every country in the world is looking at this, particularly the Iranians are saying that the US is likely to take Iranian territory because we have the capability to do so.”
This article was produced by Ryan Hill for the Scripps News Group station in San Diego.
