Iranian Tse Tse

I am sorry but I have to ask if the Navy has gelded their commanders after reading this story. The Eisenhower carrier battle group got buzzed by an Iranian Fokker F27 reconnaissance plane in an area that is abnormal for them and the plane was not shot down. There is only like 6,000 American citizens aboard the carrier. Plus the planes a carrier embarks and the possible nuclear weapons stored aboard. And this plane was allowed to buzz the ship for 20 minutes and got within 1000 yards of the carrier. Since the plane was not shredded the CIWS was in stand-by mode I guess.

It seems the fly-by happened at the start of an Iranian naval exercise called Great Prohpet 5. Also involved in this exercise were small fast attack craft operating in large numbers. Lets game out this scenario. During a future Iranian exercise, lets say Great Prophet 7 another F27 passes within 1000 yards of an American carrier. The Americans hold their fire because they have seen this before and their ROE has been revised to reflect this. Then as the F27 comes abreast of the carrier island it banks hard and crashes into the carrier. 1000 yards is not enough time to do anything but take it unless someone has their finger right on the Auto mode of the CIWS. And CIWS can get a bearing on the plane. Now we have an American carrier on fire and possibly out of control. Then prong two of the attack happens as the speed boats come racing in to strike at the distracted escorts in suicide runs. It seems an awefully cheap way to neutralize a large chunk of American power in the Middle East just before Iran does something like punch out Israel.