From reading comments on pieces I’ve posted here previously, I know that a significant number of the folks who read my stuff are old enough to remember the TV sitcom Mc Hale’s Navy.  I’d wager that when you think back to that show, terms like clumsy, bumbling, and goofballs come to mind.  Well, now we have a 21^st-century reincarnation of that bunch of goofy goombahs – Mc Haji’s Navy, which occasionally treats the world to video tidbits every bit as funny as Mc Hale’s ever were.

This time, it’s an event that has actually been much anticipated since observation satellites first detected what appeared to be a U.S. Navy super-carrier under construction at an Iranian naval base on the Persian Gulf coast.  It was quickly determined through further observation that the structure was merely a mock-up, a sort of Persian Potemkin barge without power or apparent purpose.  There was much speculation at the time as to what the Iranians could be up to in going to the expense and trouble of building such a behemoth.  The Iranians told Janes that it was a movie prop, but most military pundits agreed that it was designed to be a realistic target ship for training Iranian air and naval forces in opposing the presence of U.S. Navy carrier groups in the Persian Gulf.

Those who leaned toward target practice were right on the money.  Iran has released a video that purports to show the tactical prowess of its naval forces in defeating a U.S. super-carrier in a swarming attack of small, missile, and torpedo-equipped attack boats.  The video shows a group of Iranian Pooh-Bahs observing the operation, dubbed Great Prophet 9, from a comfortable covered platform, with one of them apparently directing the attack by radio.

Enter Mc Haji’s Navy, with a line of several small attack boats approaching the huge, totally isolated carrier in a line abreast formation – which would render them shooting gallery ducks in an actual confrontation, where an American carrier under attack would have combat air cover, fast-mover aircraft that could simply fly down that line abreast, strafing with cannons that would be more than sufficient to destroy such small, vulnerable targets.  But even if that air cover should not be available, the on-board weapons systems on the carrier and its escort vessels, such as Phalanx and the Typhoon chain gun, would obliterate the attacking craft with deadly efficiency long before they ever got as close to their target as the video depicts.  

And that is why Mc Haji’s Navy is every bit as comical as McHale’s.  The complete unreality of the events depicted in the Iranian video has to make the world wonder just how detached these clowns are.  They spend all that time and money to build a mock-up aircraft carrier to show the world how they will counter the superiority of the U.S. Navy, and then they conduct and film their exercises in what can be described only as a laughable demonstration of their complete tactical ineptitude and their total inability to comprehend the reality of the threat they face from the United States Navy.  They completely ignore the reality of the heavily armed escort vessels that constantly guard the perimeter of a carrier, and they make no allowances for the aircraft, which are also a hovering, deadly presence over the mother ship.  Yet Mc Haji’s Navy crows victory.

And Obama wants to let these fruit loops have nukes?