Three large San Diego-based warships carrying up to 2,500 Camp Pendleton Marines have been dispatched to the Middle East to bolster U.S. forces in the war against Iran, the Associated Press and Reuters reported on Friday.
The amphibious ready group is being led by the USS Boxer, an 844-foot ship that’s known as a mini-carrier because of its array of air assets, which include F-35B stealth fighter jets. Boxer is traveling with the amphibious warships USS Portland and USS Comstock.
The ships are carrying elements of Camp Pendleton’s 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, or MEU, an air-and-ground attack force that specializes in rapid response missions, particularly amphibious assaults. Pendleton-based MEUs helped put Marines ashore during the Iraq War in 2003.
The Boxer ready group left San Diego on Thursday, about a week after the USS Tripoli, which was based in San Diego until last year, headed for the Middle East with two other ships and about 2,500 Marines.
The Pentagon is dispatching ready groups to the Middle East because ground forces might be needed to supplement the missile and drone attacks the U.S. has been carrying out against Iran since the war began on Feb. 28.
The Trump administration is focused on finding ways to broadly reopen the Strait of Hormuz to be used by oil tankers. That could involve using ground forces to take over Kharg Island, a splotch in the Persian Gulf that serves as Iran’s main oil export terminal.
President Donald Trump was non-committal about plans for Kharg Island when questioned by reporters Thursday, at one point describing opening up the strait as “a simple military maneuver.”
“It’s relatively safe, but you need a lot of help, in the sense of you need ships, you need volume,” Trump said.
It was not clear Friday if the Boxer ready group will be operating near the San Diego-based USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, which is operating in the Arabian Sea. The group recently finished the fundamental training it must do to deploy.
The Boxer’s last major deployment lasted from July 16 to Nov. 24, 2024. The deployment was interrupted early on by mechanical problems that forced the 31-year-old ship to return to San Diego for repairs.
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