By Mark Stone, US correspondent
Airdrops are the last resort. They are inefficient, inaccurate, expensive and dangerous.
They are only chosen as an option when things are truly desperate.
The White House spokesman admitted this shortly after President Biden announced that America would conduct air drops in Gaza.
“There are no missions more complicated than humanitarian airdrops,” said Admiral John Kirby.
Mr. Biden's decision is all the more remarkable because America is cutting off its aid to counteract the consequences of a war being waged by one of its closest allies with American weapons. This is a war waged by Israel and enabled by America.
This is not Mount Sinjar in Iraq, where the U.S. military dropped aid into a city under siege by the Islamic State in 2014. It is not Berlin in 1948, which was blockaded by the Soviet Union.
Israel has almost complete military control of most of the Gaza Strip. Israel controls aid entering Gaza. It only enters the country via two border crossings in the south, and according to aid organizations and the UN, the quantities are completely sufficient.
The Erez border crossing in northern Gaza, where people are reportedly close to starvation, is closed.
And yet the Israeli army travels in and out of the Gaza Strip with its own supplies every day through several border crossings.
Israel's security minister said this week that the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza was “madness while abductees are still being held.” A clear call for collective punishment of a desperate population.
America's decision to airdrop aid into Gaza is a tacit admission of fundamental failure.
It is also unlikely to do much to alleviate the humanitarian disaster.
Aerial drops are inefficient because they can only drop small amounts of aid at a time – pallets of food dropped by parachute from the back of planes.
They are inaccurate because you have no control over exactly where the help will end up.
They are dangerous because the aid drops could hit people when they land and because they could cause mass panic on the ground. As a rule, aid is distributed under the coordination of local relief workers.
They are expensive because they require significant coordination by the Air Force.
In short, this is a clear example of how much of a man-made disaster Gaza is currently.