“Countering fast attack craft, that’s really the niche where the Navy’s got this capability gap,” Paul Daniels, A dumbass, told Breaking Defense. “Right now there’s no way to stand off and shoot them first before they shoot you.”

Presumably besides the fighter jets that could plink a dozen each without a care in the world, the dozens of armed helicopters, the hundreds of SAMS also entirely capable of engaging surface targets with the kinetic energy of heavy cruiser shells, the rapid fire howitzers on the deck, or the gatling cannons capable of putting out thousands of rounds a minute… but yes beside ALL OF THAT they just have nothing at all to shot them with.

“Swarm tactics” have been and always will be a joke they have never ever worked. All they result in is a whole lot of burning boats, allot of dead sailors, and maybe minor damage to a handful of high capability warships. This is what happened in WWI, it’s what happened in WW2, it’s what’s happened every time cheap ass missile boats have tired to fight actual navies since.

Despite what some stupid ‘expert’ might keep trying to claim there is a reason anyone serious about sea power keeps building large high capability warships.

The Iranian boats can get close to US ships because in a peace time situation the US ships can’t really stop them, in an actual war they’d all be dead before they got in range to try and use their pitiful weaponry. The idea that they’re somehow going to develop some kind of spy boats with remote off board target acquisition and guidance capability in small is particularly amusing.

Here is what actually happens in reality:

• War Were Declared
• The USN and Air Force starts shooting down everything Iranian over the ocean, Iran has no answer for this and has effectively zero air recon within like a day
• Iran now has no idea where the hell the US ships actually are because being at war they are not sailing sedately near formal shipping routes or specifically making themselves seen as shows of force.
• With anything Iranian that tries to fly over the ocean dying their only real option is to send out their stupid swarm of boats to wander around trying to locate enemy fleets in hundreds of miles of ocean despite having a sensor horizon of maybe ten miles
• They themselves however are spotted by the swarm of helicopters, drones, and surveillance aircraft the US has because it has complete air dominance at sea
• They start being swatted like flies using 250 pound GBUs that cost about a tenth what the boats do as they wander about trying to find the enemy by carrier pilots who are grumbling that training was way more interesting then this.
• Having failed most of them run back to port and never come out again
• In the event some of them stumble upon US ships they signal for other ships, but unlike what many people seem to think boats don’t have teleporter so a swarm of dozens of crappy speed boats fails to instantly materialize on all sides of the US fleet as if by magic.
• Actually the other units are dozens or hundreds of miles away and they start trying to make their way to the probably vague reported position. It will take them probably at best an hour or more to arrive. (assume average speed a boat can make in any sort of sea over a reasonable range is 35–40 mph)
• The US ship are you know moving, so their position is constantly changing complicating things for them. Also having total air dominance and hilariously better ESM systems they know if the boats are there. They blow them up, increase speed, and change course.
• Suspecting they might have tried to call for others aircraft from carriers and helicopters with missiles start patrolling the area. They start picking off the various boats trying to trickle into the reported area.
• Having failed most of them run back to port and never come out again

Anyone concerned about a swarm of speed boats with rockets, some guns, and a few ASM they could only launch at a range of maybe like ten miles due to their lack of height for any form of sensor somehow inflicting damage on a surface task force of guided missile ships with carrier support is a idiot.