How Biden's floating pier off Gaza wound up a 'disappointment'

As aid groups began sounding the alarm this year that famine was possible in Gaza amid Israel's military incursion, the White House asked the Pentagon for creative solutions on how the U.S. could get more aid inside.

Trucks carrying tons of supplies were being held up at border crossings, with Israel citing security concerns about compromised cargo. Aid groups countered that the Israeli government was enforcing arbitrary rules on what supplies would be allowed.

So, what if the U.S. military dropped supplies from airplanes? Or even boats?

According to multiple officials familiar with the deliberations, the U.S. military spelled out the president's options. Air drops were doable, but not terribly effective. One C-130 cargo plane can carry about as much aid as a single truck.

Delivering aid via sea was considered even more complicated.

The U.S. military has the equipment to build a temporary floating pier off a coastline much as it did in Haiti after an earthquake in 2010. But the military warned the White House it wouldn't be easy, officials said.

For starters, the proposal would take one to two months to complete and require the deployment of several hundred troops. The pier also wouldn't work if sea levels rose to high -- a factor that would be increasingly problematic in August into fall.

Then there was the question of who would agree distribute the aid after it arrived in Gaza. U.S. aid groups were still at odds with Israel's government on who would provide security to truck drivers and whether there were enough guarantees they wouldn't get struck by Israeli fire.

By early March, the White House opted for air drops. That first weekend, the military was given the greenlight to drop some 38,000 meals via parachute from three C-130s.

Officials told reporters they were still looking at all the possibilities.

"We're looking at the land routes, we're looking at the sea route, we're looking at the air route, to really ensure that we're exploring every opportunity to get assistance in," one official said after the first air drop, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials were still holding out hope that private talks with Israeli officials would open up ground routes so aid could to start flowing.

Five days after the first air drop though, talks with the Israelis to increase access to humanitarian aid via ground weren't as productive as officials hoped. A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas also seemed elusive.

Humanitarian and advocacy groups argued that Biden could have done more to demand Israel open up ground routes to let aid trucks through. They argued the U.S. could withhold some of the $3 billion it spends each year on military aid for Israel.

But as a staunch supporter of supplying Israel with weapons to defend itself from a possible attack from Iran, Biden declined. Instead, he ordered the U.S. military to build a pier off the Gaza coast, announcing his plans in the March 7 State of the Union speech.

"This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day," he declared in his address to Congress, as 1,000 US troops scrambled to deploy to the Middle East.

Shortly after becoming operational in May, the pier broke in rough weather. The Army fixed it and tried again, only to have to remove the pier from the coast two more times due to high sea states.

Four months after he ordered its construction, Biden acknowledged the pier hadn't worked as planned.

"I've been disappointed that some of the things that I've put forward have not succeeded as well, like the port we attached from Cyprus -- I was hopeful that would be more successful," he told reporters in a July 11 news conference.

Days later, last Wednesday, the U.S. military announced it was packing up the pier for good and ending its mission.

"We're now mission complete and transitioning to a new phase," said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command announced this week.

U.S. troops were expected to remain offshore for now until the remaining aid in Cyprus can be delivered to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The military has not announced when troops will return.

In the end, the $230 million pier was operational 20 out of the 60 days it was deployed. It enabled the delivery of some 20 million pounds of aid to Gaza, which USAID estimates would provide enough food to half a million people in Gaza for one month.

Aid groups say access via land routes remains difficult and the humanitarian situation has worsened. Distribution points inside Gaza for aid have shut down and only a few bakeries are operational, according to the UN's World Food Programme.

U.S. officials though defended the construction of the pier as better than nothing.

"When the president announced this at the State of the Union, what we were talking about was an all of U.S. government effort to ensure that we were leaving no stone unturned," said State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel.

"That's what this is about -- us trying to pursue every possible alternative to ensure that we can get humanitarian aid into Gaza. And in that effort, this pier was successful," he added.

ABC News' Shannon Kingston and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.