[bill_daniels]

This does lead to a valid question, can an aircraft carrier by itself successfully defend from a swarm of small speedboats? I'm assuming any deck guns wouldn't be able to angle down enough to shoot in the water nearby. And we all saw from the USS Cole attack how problematic a small suicide boat can be.

What if the Houthis, Iran's proxy terrorists, launched a swarm speedboat attack on one of our carriers? The Strait is pretty narrow in the area, I'm assuming the support ships of the task force wouldn't be able to surround and "protect the quarterback" the way they would in open water.

I'm not too troubled by this, because I'm pretty sure Iran knows that, while Trump does not want war, and will generally not take their bait, like our uber expensive drone being shot down, if they actually attacked our naval vessels, it would be an automatic fire and fury response.