{"id":41405,"date":"2014-02-02T08:02:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T14:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41405"},"modified":"2014-01-27T06:51:40","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T12:51:40","slug":"doakes-sunday-mchafezjians-navy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41405","title":{"rendered":"Doakes Sunday: McHafezjian’s Navy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n

Iran, fresh off its triumph getting President Obama to drop sanctions, is expanding its purview.\u00a0 A desert nation\u00a0sends its fleet<\/a>\u00a0into the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d be worried if I hadn\u2019t looked closely at the photo (expand for a better view).\u00a0 That boat is so low to the water, the fender is floating instead of hanging.\u00a0 The curve of the hull makes it look about 25 feet long.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t even as large as a normal fishing vessel, it\u2019s more like a\u00a0Boston Whaler<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And the weapons those sailors are pointing have such short barrels they can\u2019t possibly hit anything over 100 yards away, especially from the rolling deck of a boat on an ocean.\u00a0 Okay, maybe it\u2019s a Small Boat Repel Boarders drill, something they practice in case the Captain\u2019s Launch is attacked.\u00a0 But usually nations brag about the big ship that the Captain\u2019s Launch comes from, not the little boat that ferries him to shore.\u00a0 Unless that\u2019s the biggest boat they have, in which case I\u2019m doubly unimpressed.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, President Obama just gave a nation of Islamic Fundamentalists the green light to develop nuclear weapons.\u00a0 How big a boat do you need to float a nuke into Tel Aviv Harbor?<\/p>\n

Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

True about the nukes – and the general value of little boats in asymmetric warfare. The terrorists who killed 169 in Mumbai a few years back came to town on a stolen fishing boat.<\/p>\n

But just in the interest of accuracy – I’m from North Dakota, and we’re a maritime people – the Iranians\u00a0have\u00a0<\/em>been building a blue-water Navy.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Iranian destroyer Samavand – a British-built ship from the early seventies. It wouldn’t even know what hit it in a battle with modern ships or, especially, submarines.<\/p><\/div>\n

Iran is<\/em> building modern warships – plenty of nations are selling them technology. \u00a0But the Iranian navy is the least of the west’s problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Iran, fresh off its triumph getting President Obama to drop sanctions, is expanding its purview.\u00a0 A desert nation\u00a0sends its fleet\u00a0into the Atlantic Ocean. I\u2019d be worried if I hadn\u2019t looked closely at the photo (expand for a better view).\u00a0 That boat is so low to the water, the fender […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41405"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41431,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41405\/revisions\/41431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}