Harpoon missile among weapons aboard patrol vessels
The U.S. Senate has rejected an effort to crack down on U.S. taxpayer
monies being forwarded to the violence-ridden nation of Egypt, and now
the Obama administration is preparing to send more heavily armed,
missile-equipped naval patrol ships to the interim government there.
For that purpose, Washington is hiring private contractors to make the transoceanic delivery on its behalf.
This shipment of Fast Missile Craft, or FMC, comes at a time when
congressional interest in suspending U.S. military aid to Egypt had
heated up – to the point there was a Senate proposal to cut it off. That
aid, according to federal law, must be suspended in response to
military coups.
But the White House refuses to designate the military overthrow of
deposed President Mohamed Morsi as a coup, and therefore has expressed
no more than a commitment to review U.S.-Egyptian aid.
The U.S. Senate last week shot down, 86-13, Sen. Rand Paul’s proposed amendment
to the transportation spending bill that would have redirected “certain
foreign assistance to the government of Egypt as a result of the July
3, 2013, military coup d’état.”
Paul specifically sought to shift some of those funds to critical domestic bridge projects.
The Senate’s rejection of the Paul amendment now leaves the
administration and its congressional supporters relatively free to
proceed with their plans, so long as funds are approved for the U.S.
Military Sealift Command endeavor.
Procurement documents
that WND located through routine database research show that the MSC is
now arranging to outsource the delivery of two of the advanced naval
craft, which the contractor will bring under its care somewhere “within
100 miles of Pensacola,” Fla.
According to a U.S. Navy description,
“The primary mission of the FMC is to conduct independent and joint
operations, primarily against armed surface adversaries” in and around
“coastal waterways of the Red Sea, Mediterranean Sea and, in particular,
the Suez Canal.”
FMC are equipped with a variety of missiles as well as a Close-In
Weapon System, which can detect and attack incoming anti-ship missiles.
Each vessel holds a crew of 40 personnel.
Other armaments aboard the Fast Missile Craft, an Ambassador IV-Class
patrol ship built by VT Halter Marine in the United States, include
eight RGM-84L Boeing Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles, (SSM) Block II
missiles, one 76mm Super Rapid gun, one MK31 Raytheon Rolling Airframe
Missile system with MK49 guided missile launching system and a guided
missile round pack that can support 21 canister-mounted missiles. Also
one Raytheon MK15 Mod 21 Phalanx Block 1B 20mm close-in weapon system
and two deck-mounted 7.62mm M60 machine guns.
The Harpoon missiles can travel in excess of 67 miles with high subsonic speeds carrying nearly 500 pounds of explosives.
The beginnings of the FMC program precede the recent controversy over
the military coup. Indeed, the George W. Bush administration in 2003 first reached out to contractors in search of someone capable of executing the then-conceptual aid initiative for Egypt.
The U.S. Navy since has awarded over $800 million in contracts to VT
Halter Marine of Pascagoula, Miss., to carry out the Egypt FMC program.
One already has been delivered, and the company in March 2010 had
announced a $165 million contract to build a fourth FMC, slated for
delivery by the end of 2013.
The new document explicitly reveals that “Egyptian military”
personnel must be permitted to board and accompany the contractor
vessels when the massive cargo containers embark from Florida en route
to Alexandria, Egypt.
The inclusion of Egyptian military representatives, who will be
unarmed, is “to maintain cargo integrity for the voyage,” the
solicitation says.
Two cargo containers each 200 feet long with a combined hauling
capability of 1,600 metric tons will deliver FMCs to Egypt. Each FMC
must have a quarter-billion-dollar insurance policy, payable to the U.S.
government in the event of a disaster.
An MSC spokesperson said the solicitation documents that WND
discovered are exactly what the public affairs office possesses, and
therefore it is unable to offer more information.
“We just fulfill the charter” for the requested contractor ships, she said.
However, when pressed to elaborate on the project’s explicit plan to
have the Egyptian military board the contractor vessels for the entirety
of the voyage, the spokesperson referred WND’s inquiry to the
Department of Defense, specifically the Office of the Secretary of
Defense.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory told WND he had nothing to add to the information in the procurement documents.
The Heavylift Cargo Transport initiative – Solicitation no.
N00033-13-R-5218 – is sensitive enough to require advance screening of
crew personnel by the El Paso Intelligence Center, or EPIC, a
multi-agency tactical operational unit.
The U.S. Department of Justice created EPIC in the ’70s primarily to
support U.S.-Mexico border and counternarcotics operations. The center
has since expanded its mission in support of law enforcement and
counterintelligence initiatives from the local- to international level.
EPIC will be tasked with approving – or disapproving – contractor shipping-crew members.
Although MSC set an August 15 contractor bid-submission deadline, the
solicitation emphasized that “funds are not currently available for
this procurement. In the event funds remain unavailable, this
procurement will be canceled without an award being made.”
In other Egypt-specific U.S. funding matters:
1) A $10 billion
aviation-support project at the U.S. Department of State continues work
with contractors on how the government may divvy up these awards through
the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or
INL.
Although Egypt is not the sole focus of this endeavor – which had
been in the planning stages long before Morsi’s ouster – INL nonetheless
has been eying Egypt as a possible target for counterdrug operations. Current INL-contractor aviation activities are taking place in
Central Florida, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Guatemala, and Iraq, it says.
“However, it is anticipated that performance
may extend into other worldwide locations and the contractor(s) must be
able to quickly extend operations to new locations on short notice, for
limited duration. Recent examples of such include Sudan, Honduras,
Malta, Libya, and Egypt.”
2) The Naval Surface Warfare Center said it intends to award a no-bid
sole-source contract to Unified Industries, Inc., or UII, to train the
Egyptian Air Force, or EAF, in technical measurements and calibration.
UII will provide subject matter consultation to EAF Metrology
Engineering and Calibration Center, which is planning to build a
facility at the Cairo West Air Base in Cairo. The Navy did not disclose
an estimated contract cost.
3) The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, extended
until August 15 the deadline for contractors to submit letters of
interest in a project to improve the Egyptian university system.
As U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor recently reported,
the USAID Higher Education Partnership Program hopes to bring together
the government of Egypt, Egyptian institutions of higher learning and
the private sector in a collaborative effort to meet the needs of this
North African nation’s business community.
A similar version of this article was published via WND.com Aug. 3, 2013. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to its author, Steve Peacock.
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Two Must-Read Commentaries on the Egyptian Conflict, U.S. Assistance
To many other conservatives (and liberals as well), the Obama administration's refusal to cut off foreign aid to Egypt initially was surprising if not insulting. How dare the president and his many Democratic and Republican supporters on this issue fail to take immediate action! Despite deposed Egyptian President Morsi's shortcomings, he was democratically elected, wasn't he? No wonder the Egyptians are rebelling.
Rather than reiterate the well-reasoned positions that conservative writers Andrew C. McCarthy and Thomas Sowell have taken on the situation, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor urges readers to deeply explore the very convincing and eye-opening commentaries from these men.
Things are not what they seem in Egypt. Those who support the "democratically elected" Morsi do not share the American concept of democracy and freedom. Islamist radicals are attempting to retake the government, and it very well may be in U.S. national interests to steer far clear of this turmoil.
While congressional and White House debate over foreign aid in general and U.S. assistance to Egypt specifically is necessary (is there really a debate at the moment?), let's not be naive about what is happening in Egypt.
See Andrew McCarthy's "Egypt’s One Chance for Democracy-- Only capable armed forces can check the violent proclivities of Islamic supremacism" as well as "Reality versus mirages in Egypt -- Thomas Sowell drubs conservatives wanting to cut off aid to military force."
While readers are at it, also consider the following Monitor articles as critical and reliable resources in the debate over foreign aid to the region:
Have U.S. 'Investments' in Mideast Paid Off?
Feds Plan to Give Egypt Armed-to-the-Teeth Ships
Obama Wants Egyptian Students to Get More from College
U.S. Modernization of Egyptian Air Force Continues as Planned (by Steve Peacock for Patriot Update)
-- S.P.