A newly released watchdog investigation into President Joe Biden’s mission last year to deliver aid to Gaza via a military logistics system known as JLOTS has confirmed years of cost cuts left the system seriously imperiled and military officials also failed to properly plan for the effort.
In the spring of 2024, in the wake of a massive Israeli campaign that left much of Gaza destroyed, Biden ordered that the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, be used to construct a pier in the war-torn region to deliver millions of tons of aid to starving residents.
The pier, operated by the Army and Navy, ultimately helped offload nearly 20 million pounds of aid. But a stream of issues, breakdowns, injured service members and delays led to concerns about the Army’s ability to build the piers and the health of the service’s watercraft community.
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Now, the Defense Department inspector general, in a report released Tuesday, found the Army and Navy didn’t put enough money into maintaining the systems and U.S. Transportation Command — a top Pentagon command overseen by a four-star general — didn’t do enough to set standards or minimum requirements for the two services.
The Pentagon “possessed the capability to conduct JLOTS operations and exercises, but reductions in capacity resulted in challenges to effectively perform these missions,” according to the report.
However, the findings are not new to those who worked in and around the JLOTS systems.
A Military.com investigation found the Army’s watercraft elements may not have been ready for prime time. The capability, which had lingered in obscurity for a half-century, was suddenly stress-tested when it was tasked with one of the Pentagon’s highest-profile missions in years.
Several experts and former community insiders told Military.com last year that the system, while capable, has suffered from funding shortfalls throughout the 20 years of the Global War on Terrorism.
The report confirmed that, noting that in the last 10 years — from 2014 to 2024 — the Army cut about $23 million from its operations and maintenance budget for the system. The Navy cut $69 million.
The report said the cuts “coincided with reductions by both services to reduce the quantity of JLOTS-capable units and equipment” and that “the reductions created significant challenges for each service’s ability to meet future JLOTS requirements.”
According to a now-retired Army warrant officer who served on the JLOTS vessels, the craft that are still in service are so old that some still have engines that say they were built in “West Germany.”
In the wake of the Gaza pier mission, also known as Operation Neptune Solace, investigators found the Army showed that its watercraft fleet had dropped six vessels — from 73 craft in November 2023 to 67 in November 2024.
“The Army did not provide an explanation for why its reported total watercraft count dropped,” the report noted.
Both the Army and Navy also struggled to gather enough people to get the mission going.
The Army unit tasked with carrying out the mission, the 7th Transportation Brigade, or 7TBX, “lacked sufficient, certified, Army mariners to meet manning requirements on some Army watercraft and struggled to keep its assigned mariners.”
“According to 7TBX officials, manning shortages delayed the deployment of some Army watercraft for Operation Neptune Solace,” investigators found.
On the Navy’s side, its unit, Naval Beach Group 1, “had to pull together every person they could to sufficiently staff vessels in accordance with Navy requirements,” the report said.
Meanwhile, when the Army invited the media to see some of the ships depart for the mission in March 2024, leaders from the community made no mention of the issues and the 7TBX commander, Col. Samuel Miller, even boasted that the Army’s first vessel left “36 hours after the president made that statement in the State of the Union address” that kicked off the mission.
Military leaders also failed to set up the mission for success, and the report found there were serious shortfalls in the planning stages of the mission.
“Operation Neptune Solace and [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] plans did not contain mission‑specific information necessary to successfully conduct a JLOTS operation,” the report found.
Furthermore, in interviews with investigators, both Army and Navy officials said “combatant command planners generally did not seek input from JLOTS subject matter experts in the units on the development of operational plans” and, thus, they “did not fully identify or consider mission-specific requirements, such as beach conditions, average sea states, and other factors likely to affect the ability to successfully conduct a JLOTS operation.”
As a result, the pier broke apart several times and had to be towed out of the area, suspending aid delivery. In one instance, the foul weather resulted in several Army boats and their crews being stranded on the beach in Gaza. While the soldiers were evacuated fairly quickly, it took several days for the Israelis to return all the boats into the water.
All told, the report notes that 62 service members were injured during the operation, though the report noted that all those injuries occurred during the performance of duties, off duty or from preexisting medical conditions.
At the time of the mission, officials only revealed three injuries — but one was so severe that the service member never returned to duty. The circumstances of those injuries were also never explained.
The report says that the Navy reported damage to 27 watercraft and equipment totaling approximately $31 million.
A fuller accounting of the injuries and equipment damage was made available to investigators at the request of Congress, but the report placed that data in a classified section.
“We have provided the classified annex as a separate document to those with a specific need to know and review the information in it,” the section read.
Despite the issues, many of which were known at the time of the operation, Pentagon officials regularly stressed that the pier delivered some 20 millions pounds of aid — food that would have otherwise not have made it to the war-torn region. At one point, the pier ended up providing the second-highest volume of aid from any entry point into Gaza.
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