Marine Corps Blount Island Command in Jacksonville, Florida

Blount Island Command is the Marine Corps command in Jacksonville that keeps the service's forward-positioned equipment and supplies ready for issue.

The command describes its job as generating, sustaining, modernizing and distributing ready-for-issue, service-managed equipment and supplies across the global positioning network, so that Marine forces can be integrated and employed quickly in naval, joint and combined operations. It works from Marine Corps Support Facility Blount Island, which the Marine Corps calls its primary integrated sustainment and positioning hub.

A 2008 article from Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany placed the command on the St. Johns River about seven miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean in Jacksonville and described it as the hub for servicing and supplying the assets aboard the Maritime Prepositioning Ships. The same article says Blount Island Command falls under Marine Corps Logistics Command, which makes it a Marine Corps organization rather than part of Naval Air Station Jacksonville or Naval Station Mayport.

The Marine Corps leased 262 acres on Blount Island from Gate Maritime Properties in 1986 and bought more than 1,100 acres there in 2004, according to the command history.

The island had been public port land first. The JAXPORT port history records that when the State Legislature created the Jacksonville Port Authority in 1963, the City of Jacksonville transferred to it the Talleyrand Municipal Docks and a tract known as Goat Island, later renamed Blount Island.

The Marine Corps organization on the island dates to September 1, 1986, when it was established as Biennial Maintenance Command; it was renamed Blount Island Command in 1989. The 2008 Albany article says that in 1989 the command was set up as a subordinate command to Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, and that it now falls under Marine Corps Logistics Command. On November 21, 2006, Marine Corps Support Facility Blount Island was activated under Marine Corps Installations East.

In 2008, the Albany article described the Blount Island Command site as a 900-acre island facility with a 3,500-foot slipway leading to five ship berths, industrial and storage buildings, rail lines and a staging area.

Maritime prepositioning means keeping Marine Corps equipment and supplies aboard ships stationed near likely trouble spots, and Blount Island is where those ships come back to Jacksonville to be serviced.

The Blount Island Command history traces the idea to President Jimmy Carter's 1977 Presidential Review Directive 18 on rapid deployment forces. In 1980 the Marine Corps loaded equipment and supplies aboard seven Military Sealift Command chartered ships, the Near-Term Prepositioning Force, positioned at Diego Garcia, and planning produced 13 ships in three squadrons, with the Maritime Prepositioning Force becoming operational between 1984 and 1986. The value showed in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, when prepositioning ships let the 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade set up defensive positions quickly in Saudi Arabia.

The service cycle has changed over the years. In 2008 the Albany article said the ships, named for Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients and ranging from about 673 to 906 feet long, returned to Blount Island approximately every three years under a 36-month rotation, with about 60 days per ship from offload to backload while the ship went into dry dock. The command now says ships undergo scheduled maintenance periods every 42 months, during which Blount Island teams inspect, repair, modernize and reconfigure the equipment.

Blount Island Command also manages gear stored ashore. The command history says the Norway program, begun under a 1981 memorandum of understanding, was renamed the Marine Corps Prepositioning Program-Norway in 2005, and that from 2005 until 2022 Blount Island managed the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Augmentation Program-Kuwait, about 1,500 principal end items. In 2008 the Albany article put the Norway program in six caves in the Trondheim region with more than 736,000 square feet of storage.

Most of the Blount Island Command workforce is civilian, either civil service or contractor, according to the 2008 MCLB Albany article.

That article said many of the civilians were retired military, that contractors did the bulk of the maintenance work, and that Marines served as inspectors approving supplies before they went aboard the ships in Jacksonville. Serviced containers and vehicles were blue-tagged by Marines and staged for loading, and one ship came in approximately every five weeks. Six prepositioning ships were sent to South Asia after the tsunami there, the article added.

Information technology work is contracted too. CGI announced on December 22, 2015 that Blount Island Command had awarded it a $19.6 million, five-year logistics services contract, a recompete win for a company that says it has supported the command since 1992.

In March 2026 a Blount Island Command team supported the first maritime prepositioning force offload in Mindanao, in the Philippines.

A Blount Island Command story on DVIDS says a technical assistance and advisory team deployed from Jacksonville and helped prepare the USNS Sgt. William W. Seay for offload at the Port of Cagayan de Oro, delivering equipment to I Marine Expeditionary Force for Exercise Balikatan 2026. It calls the operation the first time maritime prepositioning force equipment was delivered in Mindanao.

The command news page, checked October 18, 2026, listed fall work at Marine Corps Support Facility Blount Island. The command received and verified its first Amphibious Combat Vehicle battalion tool kits on September 28 and 29, ahead of positioning the vehicles afloat and ashore. A Marine commander told regional defense leaders in Jacksonville on September 21 that sustaining forces overseas depends on skilled workers, resilient infrastructure and communities where military families can afford to live. On October 7 the command trained officers to lead advisory teams issuing equipment during next year's exercises, and it reported that prepositioning ships are expected to gain access to shore power on Blount Island to cut generator fuel use and maintenance costs.

Blount Island is also home to JAXPORT's Blount Island Marine Terminal, the port's largest marine facility.

JAXPORT lists the terminal 12.5 nautical miles from the sea buoy, with 7,094 linear feet of deepwater berths, 11 container cranes and a 47-foot harbor depth with an adjacent turning basin; its gate is at 9620 Dave Rawls Boulevard. The port history records that the Jacksonville Harbor Deepening Project, completed through the Blount Island terminal in 2022, deepened 11 miles of the federal channel from the sea buoy to Blount Island to 47 feet from 40 feet, and that two new container cranes entered service at Blount Island in 2026.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Blount Island Command home and history pages, the 2008 MCLB Albany article, the command's DVIDS story on Mindanao, the CGI contract announcement and JAXPORT's terminal and port history pages.