About 35 local boat captains simulated swarming attack maneuvers in fishing boats rigged with machine guns while fighter jets, attack helicopters, and the A-10 "Warthog" simulated attacks from above in the Choctawatchee Bay, Florida.
ADVERTISEMENT
US military test shows the A-10 'Warthog' can obliterate the small boat swarms that Iran uses
“There are plenty of places in the world where low-tech adversaries can mount 50-caliber machine guns and rocket launchers on small boats for use against us."
An A-10 Thunderbolt IIs with the 74th Fighter Squadron from Moody Air Force Base in Georgia flying over the Gulf of Mexico on February 7 during a weapons-system evaluation program at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
“We evaluate precision guided munitions against realistic targets with realistic enemy defenses,” said Lt. Col. Sean Neitzke, the 86th Fighter Weapons Squadron commander in an Air Force statement. “There are plenty of places in the world where low-tech adversaries can mount 50-caliber machine guns and rocket launchers on small boats for use against us. They could also use other types of shoulder launched weapons, all of which could be a threat to American assets.”
The situation described by Neitzke bears eerily similarities to the situation with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.
Patrick Megahan, an expert on Iran's military with the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, told Business Insider that even without the Air Force, the US Navy has plenty of ways to counter the threat posed by Iranian-style swarm attacks.
ADVERTISEMENT
"US Army Apache attack helicopters also frequently drill aboard US Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf for countering exactly this threat," Megahan said of the swarming boats.
"This doesn’t include the Navy’s own Hellfire-equipped Seahawk helicopters or the Marine Corps’s very capable attack helicopter squadrons that maintain an almost constant presence in the waters off the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. In fact, two fully load American attack helicopters would likely wreak havoc on an Iranian small boat swarm."
JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!
ADVERTISEMENT
Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:
Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng
ADVERTISEMENT