A photographic visit to the USS Mesa Verde

A visit to the USS Mesa Verde
photos by Allan Hawkins

The USS Mesa Verde is one of the US Navy's newest ships. It's a San Antonio class amphibious transport dock ship, with air cushion hovercraft landing vehicles, MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and the ability to quickly put 800 marines ashore in case the politicians in Washington order it.

Allan Hawkins visited the ship during the annual Panamax naval maneuvers, just before an announcement that there will be a couple of naval bases built on the Pacific side of Panama came out of a meeting between Panamanian and US officials. (There are various versions of the plan, with the Martinelli administration's insistence that the facilities at Pinas Bay in Darien and Punta Coca in Veraguas will be Panamanian, but that US forces will be able to use them. That fits with the US Armed Forces trend not to have bases like we used to know in the old Canal Zone, but "forward operating locations" with small forces of "civilian contractors" and none of the Post Exchanges, dependents or infrastructures of a traditional base.)

The premise of the Panamax war games is defense of the Panama Canal. The premise of the proposed new naval bases is interdiction of drug traffic.

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