Boarders?

This is coolbert:

"Stand by to repel boarders!!"

Hot of the presses today:

"Routine" Iranian machinations?? One false step and this could have been really big FAST!!

"U.S. says Iranian boats harassed warships"

"Officials call it 'provocative;' Iran says ships didn't recognize each other

"WASHINGTON - Iranian boats harassed and provoked three American Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to blow up the vessels, U.S. officials said Monday."

"five armed "fast boats" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard approached at high speed, darting in and out of the formation."

These "five armed 'fast boats'" are presumably of the boghammar variety. Putt-putt speed boats, of the commercial variety, fitted with various small arms and then some. From the pictures of this one particular boghammar, that is the Soviet fifty-seven caliber [.57] anti-tank machine gun [?] on the bow, a rocket launcher in the rear.



"an improvised naval fighting vessel, typically used by a local irregular military force and usually being a modified civilian boat or other similar machine. It is a speedboat or fast patrol boat (as used by police for harbor/river patrol) on which is mounted a recoilless rifle, heavy machine gun, mortar, or another relatively small weapons system. A boghammar is usually unarmoured."

"At one point a radio message from one of the Iranian boats warned, 'You are going to blow up within minutes.'"

Well, if the boat was filled with a half [1/2] to one ton of C4 explosive, it could cause a lot of damage, maybe even SINK one of those destroyers.

"Five small boats began charging the U.S. ships, dropping boxes in the water in front of the ships and forcing the U.S. ships to take evasive maneuvers, said the Pentagon official. The boxes floated by, and officials said they didn’t know what was in them because U.S. sailors didn’t pick them up."

Making the U.S vessels take evasive maneuvers WHILE THE SHIPS WERE ACTUALLY IN PART ON A SEARCH AND RESCUE MISSION IS A DELIBERATE ACT OF AGGRESSION OF ITSELF. These ships at the exact moment were looking for a seaman that had fallen overboard just a short time earlier.

"On Friday, the U.S. Navy announced the same team of naval ships had been searching in the Arabian Sea for a sailor missing for a day from the Hopper [one of the U.S. ships]."

"Iranian boats 'harass' U.S. Navy, officials say"

These would have been Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels on the attack, NOT Iranian Navy. Consider this however:

"In November the U.S. military reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps had taken command of Tehran's naval operations in the Persian Gulf."

Info that would have HAD to carried great weight with the U.S. naval commander on the scene.

AND, this is a perfect example of where the crew of the U.S. Navy ship maybe would have been required to take action with small-arms if the boghammars had gotten close enough. Repel the attack with concentrated rifle and machine gun fire!!

coolbert.