Given modern missile technology the US navy is nothing more than a giant floating target. Iranian and military sources note that the linkage Sorouri made between the capture of the RQ-170 and the naval drill in the Strait of Hormuz was intended to inform Washington that Tehran in possession of the drone no longer fears the ability of the naval air carriers the US has deployed in the Persian Gulf to prevent its closure of the strategic waterway.
Not new: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/washington/12navy.html
There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.
In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.
Lots of "agile" speedboat vs. one A-10 is total slaughter. We would cut through the Iranian military like a hot knife through butter, just like we did with the Iraqi military. The mistake in Iraq and Afghanistan is "nation building". Let's not try to civilize the Iranians. Bust up their infrastructure, let them read by candlelight for a couple of generations and kill any of them that come near us. Germans did not mount a last ditch resistance because they knew we meant business. If someone took a potshot at American troops from the basement of a building, we leveled the building with artillery.