Once again the world is being treated to an outburst of swaggering bravado by another Muslim military leader, this time an Iranian admiral who seems naïve in the extreme when it comes to the realities of modern combat. According to Military Times:

Fadavi was quoted Tuesday by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying the immense size of the U.S. carriers makes them an “easy target.” He said contingency plans to target American carriers are a priority for the Guard’s naval forces.

Fadavi is Revolutionary Guards admiral, Ali Fadavi, and we can probably forgive him for his foolish braggadocio which arose out of an explanation of the huge, mock-up carrier the Iranians have been busily constructing at Bandar Abbas, apparently for target practice. Less forgivable is Military Times’ gullibility in describing the Admiral’s Guard as “powerful Revolutionary Guard,” and “hard-line guard’s naval forces,” reminding us of how the breathless Western media predicted that coalition forces might meet their match in Iraq in Saddam Hussein’s “powerful” and ‘elite” Republican Guards. Yeah well, if memory fails you, do what the Admiral seriously needs to do and Google, “What happened to Republican Guards?” Here’s but one example.

This gunboat admiral should spend some time reviewing Web images of Iraq’s elite forces after a few days of being the primary targets of the coalition air forces. Before the ground war even commenced, the Air Force was claiming that it had destroyed or degraded beyond fighting capability all but a couple dozen of the Guard’s 800 plus tanks. It’s seriously doubtful that the admiral has anywhere near 800 gunboats and even if he should, gunboats on the water can’t be hidden in towns, under bridges or parked among innocent civilians the way Saddam’s Republican Guards so futilely tried to save their tanks. Those gunboats are hanging out there fully exposed.

Should they pose the slightest threat to the heart of a carrier strike group, the Hornets’ nest, so to speak, Admiral Fadavi and his “elite fleet” are going to learn the bitter lesson that the admiral’s characterization of U.S. carriers as “easy targets” might be a bit off-target and that they themselves have become the easy targets of the thousands of lethal stingers pouring into them from not only the dozens of angry Hornets but also the bristling, protective firepower of the other naval vessels securing the carrier’s perimeter. Even the smallest of these ships carry lethal arrays of missiles and mount computerized weapons like Phalanx Close-In Weapons System, a 20 millimeter Gatling gun which can chop a gunboat to pieces at a rate of 4500 explosive shells per minute. Phalanx is also a tested defense against any anti-ship missiles the soon-to-be-gone gunboats might launch before they’re obliterated.

The overly optimistic admiral might want to consult one of Saddam’s Republican Guards’ generals about such public preening and posturing before the battle:

If he can find one still around…