The U.S. Navy taunted Iran’s unmatched ability at building a target ship by taking to Instagram and showing a bogus American aircraft carrier with a bullseye on it.
The Navy proclaimed in a meme, ‘IRAN BUILDS TARGET SHIP’, showing an aerial view of the fake vessel sitting alongside, unprotected and vulnerable with a bullseye, and adds across the bottom of the image, ‘THEY’RE EXPERTS AT THAT’.
The post comes after Iran built the wooden replica of a U.S. Navy Nimitz-class carrier and had its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard fire missiles at it in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, as Breitbart News reported.
The replica carries 16 mock-ups of fighter jets on its deck, according to the satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies. The vessel appears to be some 650 feet long and 160 feet wide.
A real Nimitz is over 980 feet long and 245 feet wide.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard last Tuesday used massed speedboats, missiles, commandos and helicopter-borne rockets to overwhelm the fake aircraft carrier as guard commander, Major General Hossein Salami, looked on proudly.
The unmanned wooden target remained stationary and defenseless in the strategic Strait of Hormuz during the entire drill.
In a military move designed to threaten the U.S. amid growing regional tensions between Tehran and Washington, Salami looked well pleased as Iranian special forces fast-roped onto the replica in the footage released from an exercise called “Great Prophet 14.”
Vision (see below) also showed a helicopter firing a missile at the replica, complete with 16 fake fighter jets on board, while fast boats encircled the vessel as crews cried out with blood-curdling threats against the U.S. Navy and its sailors.
Iranian troops on land meanwhile fired anti-aircraft batteries as a drone target in the exercise from a location state television described as being near the port city of Bandar Abbas.
Tuesday’s exercise was seen as especially provident in Iran because nobody was killed in the process, as has happened before.
As Breitbart News reported, in May 19 sailors died and 15 others were left wounded after an Iranian naval support vessel was hit and sunk by a surface-to-surface missile in a “friendly fire” incident later described as “a bit of an accident” by Iranian authorites.
The sinking happened during an exercise in the Sea of Oman, near the Iranian port city of Jask, according to one Iran state media outlet that also confirmed the surprise “martyrdom” of the deceased crewmen.
In this photo released Tuesday, July 28, 2020, by Sepahnews, Revolutionary Guard’s speed boats circle around a replica aircraft carrier during a military exercise. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has fired a missile from a helicopter targeting the mock-up aircraft carrier in the strategic Strait of Hormuz according to footage aired on state television on Tuesday. Iranian commandos also fast-roped down from a helicopter onto the replica in the footage from the exercise called “Great Prophet 14.” (Sepahnews via AP)