A US ship carrying aid for the Gaza Strip has left Cyprus, but Washington’s “floating pier” is not yet ready to unload the supplies, the Pentagon said on 9 May. 

Pentagon spokesman Major General Patrick Ryder said on Thursday afternoon that while the pier’s construction has nearly been completed, weather conditions make unloading the aid “unsafe.” 

The aid on the US Sagamore vessel will eventually be loaded onto another US ship docked at Israel’s Ashdod port, which will then transport it to the pier system – known as Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS) – as soon as it has been fully installed and the conditions are right, Ryder said. 

“While I’m not going to provide a specific date, we expect these temporary piers to be put into position in the very near future, pending suitable security and weather conditions,” he added. 

According to CNN, the pier’s effectiveness may continue to be hindered by weather and sea conditions even once fully operational. 

“JLOTS operations, which must take both safety and throughput requirements into account, must often wait for favorable weather and sea state conditions,” Israel’s Marine Data Center reported. The pier can only be safely operated with maximum 3-foot waves and winds less than 15 miles per hour. 

A US defense official told CNN that such limitations of the pier system are “accurate.”

“The bottom line – heavy seas do have an effect on the ability to execute the JLOTS mission … If winds or waves are stronger, loading and unloading using the JLOTS pier becomes dangerous,” the official said. 

US officials also expressed security concerns over the timing of the pier operation, which coincides with Israel’s operation in Rafah and relentless, indiscriminate bombardment of the city. The planned staging ground for the pier operation has been hit by the resistance’s mortars and rockets a number of times in past weeks, and a potential Israeli expansion of its operation in Rafah could make tensions worse.