US has gunships ready to deliver on Trump’s warning to Iran
- America has been bolstering air forces in the region for some time, even before Donald Trump vowed to ‘shoot down’ Iranian boats
Even before President Donald Trump’s vow to “shoot down” Iranian speedboats if they harass American ships in international waters, the US Navy was bolstering its ability to call in AC-130 gunships and Apache attack helicopters to defend its presence in the Persian Gulf.
A practice run for the new tactics on April 15 drew 11 gunboats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that crossed the bows and sterns of American vessels at close range. And that prompted Trump’s tweet on April 22 saying he’d “instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.”
Going back to the Obama administration, Revolutionary Guard members in small but agile speedboats have harassed US ships, but the encounters usually have ended with warnings from the Americans to back off. As far back as 2007, the Office of Naval Intelligence estimated Iran had a fleet of 1,000 small boats that was growing. In early January 2017 a US Navy guided-missile naval destroyer fired warning shots at four Iranian rapid-attack craft in the Strait of Hormuz.
While attention has turned on the latest confrontation at sea between Iran and the US – and on Trump’s vow to stop such close encounters – there’s been little focus on the recent moves by the US Central Command to come better-armed with joint Navy, Air Force and Army systems for spotting targets and transferring data.
The live-fire gunship exercises began in March as a first-time effort at coordination between Navy patrol coastal ships, the service’s P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft and the Air Force’s special operations AC-130 gunships, which are capable of night-time attacks. Armed with a 30mm Gatling gun and precision-guided munitions, the famed gunships have been used to attack ground targets --- but not naval targets – from Vietnam to Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Then on April 15, Navy vessels were practising coordinated operations with Army AH-64E Apache tank-busting attack helicopters when the US says Iranian boats came within 50 yards of the USS Lewis B. Puller and within 10 yards of the bow of the Coast Guard cutter Maui.