What you are about to hear is not coming from a mainstream media anchor sitting behind a desk reading off a teleprompter. This is coming from someone who has sat in the cockpit of a fighter jet, who has trained for exactly these kinds of engagements, who has studied Iran’s military doctrine inside classified vaults, and who understands what it means when the United States Navy unleashes an F-18 Super Hornet on an Iranian oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Because that is exactly what just happened. And what it signals about the future of Iran’s so-called mosquito fleet is something that every single person watching this video needs to understand completely. Let’s walk this entire situation from the beginning because context here means absolutely everything.
On February 28th, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury. That was the opening salvo of the most intense American air and naval campaign since the Cold War. Over the following weeks, US forces conducted more than 1,400 strikes. They destroyed 161 Iranian vessels. They eliminated more than 90% of Iran’s 8,000 naval mines. They set Iran’s entire defense industry back by 90%. Admiral Brad Cooper told the Senate Armed Services Committee directly that it will take Iran, “a generation to rebuild its navy. One generation.” That is not spin. That is the operational reality on the ground. Iran’s conventional military capability has been crushed, but here is where it gets complicated.
And here is where the mosquito fleet comes back into the picture. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, the IRGC Navy, does not fight like a conventional navy. They never did. They fight like a swarm. They use fast attack craft, small agile speedboats that can get up to 50 plus knots in the shallow island dotted waters of the southern Strait of Hormuz. These boats carry rocket pods, anti-ship missiles, heavy machine guns, and in some configurations they are loaded with explosives and turned into unmanned suicide boats designed to kamikaze into a navy vessel or a commercial ship. This is a doctrine Iran has spent decades perfecting. It is built specifically to operate in confined, geographically complex waterways where large warships cannot easily maneuver. And it is the last real asymmetric card that the IRGC has left to play.
On May 4th, 2026, the United States launched Operation Project Freedom. This was a new armed escort mission designed to physically shepherd stranded commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz and out of the Persian Gulf. You have to understand the scale of what was happening here. At the peak of this standoff, more than 230 loaded oil tankers were confirmed anchored and waiting inside the Persian Gulf, completely unable to move. Ships from 87 different countries were stranded or harassed. More than 2,000 mariners were trapped aboard more than 1,000 ships. Iran had effectively turned the Strait of Hormuz into a hostage situation for global shipping. And Project Freedom was the United States military’s answer to that.
The force package that CENTCOM deployed for day one of Project Freedom was serious. Two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, the USS Truxtun and the USS Mason, were the surface vessel spearheads. The Arleigh Burke class is 509 ft of layered lethality. Its primary weapon system is the MK 41 vertical launch system carrying up to 96 missiles in a standard configuration. That load includes Standard Missile SM-6 for long-range air and surface engagements, evolved Sea Sparrow missiles for close-in air defense work, and Tomahawk cruise missiles for land strikes. One ship, 96 deadly rounds ready to go. These destroyers also carry a 5-in MK45 gun capable of putting precisely aimed naval gunfire on surface targets at ranges exceeding 10 mi.
Above those destroyers, CENTCOM put up a layered air cover umbrella that included US Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and US Navy MH-60 Seahawk helicopters plus over 100 fighters and advanced drones committed to this operation. The Apache is the US Army’s primary attack helicopter. The current frontline variant, the AH-64E Guardian, carries a 30-mm M230 chain gun mounted under the forward fuselage and slaved directly to the gunner’s helmet through the integrated helmet and display sighting system. Wherever the gunner looks, the gun points. Against a fast boat moving at close range, that is decisive and immediate. Beyond the gun, the Apache carries up to 16 AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on four stub wing hard points, laser guided with a range out to multiple miles. It also carries up to 76 Hydra 2.75-in rockets for area suppression.
The MH-60 Seahawk, the Navy’s dedicated anti-surface warfare platform, can carry AGM-114 Hellfire anti-surface missiles and crew-served machine guns. It has two GE 700 turboshaft engines, max air speed of about 180 knots and a service ceiling of about 13,000 ft. Its combat radius covers the entire strait with ease. Iran’s response to Project Freedom was immediate. CENTCOM confirmed that Iran launched multiple cruise missiles, drones and small boats targeting both US Navy ships and commercial vessels simultaneously. And then they sent out the mosquito fleet. Six Iranian fast attack craft, the core of the IRGC’s asymmetric naval capability, went into the water on May 4th. None of them came back. Not one. The Apache and Seahawk crews were already pre-positioned for exactly this threat. They engaged. All six boats were destroyed.
CENTCOM’s intercept rate on day one was 100% across boats, missiles and drones. Every Iranian missile and drone directed at the USS Truxtun and USS Mason was intercepted. The destroyers completed their transit. Two American-flagged merchant vessels made it through the strait successfully. Now, think about what that number means. Admiral Brad Cooper himself stated that Iran typically deploys between 20 and 40 of these fast-attack boats in a harassment swarm. That is their standard doctrine. Overwhelm a target with numbers, attack from multiple angles simultaneously, and retreat before a response can be mounted. But, on May 4th, Iran could only bring six boats. Six. After Operation Epic Fury had finished its work, after 1,400 strikes had rolled across Iran’s naval infrastructure, they could only field six fast-attack craft. And all six of them are now providing what their parliament is calling strategic deterrents for fish at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
Iran’s state media, specifically Fars News Agency, which is the official IRGC propaganda megaphone, claimed a US warship was struck by two missiles and forced to retreat. CENTCOM’s response was simple and direct. That did not happen. Meanwhile, Iran also launched drone and missile strikes on UAE oil refineries on two consecutive days. The United Arab Emirates confirmed those attacks. The British military separately reported two cargo vessels were ablaze off the coast of the UAE, and a third was hit by an unknown projectile in the strait itself. A South Korean-operated bulk carrier caught fire after an explosion. This is the full kinetic picture of what Iran was throwing at the region simultaneously, trying to cause chaos everywhere at once with whatever degraded capability they had remaining.
And then on May 5th, an Iranian drone struck the French-owned container vessel CMA CGM San Antonio, leaving it drifting without power with eight crew members injured. That attack happened roughly 2 hours before a diplomatic pause announcement. France, which had been attempting to maintain some level of neutrality, found itself unable to stay on the sidelines after the IRGC started striking their vessels openly. Reports emerged of French warships transiting the Suez Canal heading toward the theater. When Iran starts shooting at French ships, France runs out of neutral ground to stand on pretty quickly.
Now, here’s where the operational picture escalates to an entirely new level. May 6th, 2026, 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. A US Navy F-18 Super Hornet screams off the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. It locks onto an Iranian-flagged oil tanker called the MT Hasna, which was running the American blockade hard trying to break through it and transit to an Iranian port in the Gulf of Oman. The US Navy issued multiple warnings. The Hasna’s crew ignored every single one of them. Every chance they had to not get shot, they passed on it. And so, the F-18 delivered a surgical burst from its 20 mm M61A2 Vulcan Gatling cannon straight through the ship’s rudder. The Hasna lost steering. It stopped cold drifting in international waters. CENTCOM’s official statement was controlled, precise, and absolutely devastating in its understatement:
“Hasna is no longer transiting to Iran.”
Yeah. That is one way to put it. They are not transiting anywhere at this point. Let me break down exactly what that engagement looked like from the cockpit because this is not something that most people understand and it is important. The M61A2 Vulcan cannon fires at up to 6,600 rounds per minute. That is 110 rounds per second. Six rotating barrels, each one cycling independently, so no single barrel overheats. When a fighter pilot fires that gun, the technique is called track, shoot, track. You push slightly forward on the stick. You fire by squeezing the trigger while maintaining that slight forward pressure so that as you fire, you do not pull up the nose of the aircraft and spray rounds somewhere they are not supposed to go. Then you track again, which means you hold the pipper, that small targeting dot in your heads-up display, right on the exact spot you want to hit. You hold it there to keep the rounds surgical and centered precisely on target. And then you hear it, that sound, six barrels spinning at 6,600 RPM next to your head. It is something that stays with you forever. It is a sound that communicates raw, precise, overwhelming American capability in a way that no press statement ever could.
CENTCOM said several rounds disabled the Hasner’s rudder. That means a controlled, likely half second to one second burst from a moving aircraft put precision fire directly into the steering gear of a ship that was the length of three football fields. That is not luck. That is not firepower being thrown at a target and hoping for the best. That is years of training, thousands of hours in the cockpit, and a kill chain that starts hundreds of miles away and ends with a rudder being surgically severed from an oil tanker at 9:00 in the morning on a Tuesday. That F-18 is almost certainly from Strike Fighter Squadron 151 off the USS Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carrier operating in the Gulf of Oman alongside the USS George H.W. Bush. The F-18 Super Hornet is Boeing’s twin-engine carrier-based multirole strike fighter. It is the backbone of every Navy carrier air wing currently at sea. It fires 20 mm rounds at a switchable rate of 4,000 or 6,000 rounds per minute in high fire mode, and it carries 578 rounds in a fully integrated linkless feed system. It is the surgical scalpel of this entire blockade operation.
Now, here is the tactical picture of how this engagement was set up. Because the F-18 does not just show up and start shooting. There is an entire architecture that makes this kind of precision possible. The Super Hornet uses what is called a wheel formation when prosecuting surface targets. The pilot sets up a circular orbit around the target ship using the targeting pod, which is an advanced electro-optical and infrared camera system mounted on the aircraft that can read a license plate from miles away. The targeting pod locks onto the ship’s rudder. The aircraft may be operating in a two-ship formation with both jets on opposite sides of the wheel capable of delivering multiple bursts from different angles if needed. The entire engagement is supported by a sensor stack that includes RQ-4 Global operating miles above the battlefield, RQ-170 surveillance drones, and eventually advanced platforms like armed Fury drones feeding real-time targeting data across the entire kill chain. Every single platform in this package is talking to every other platform simultaneously through Link 16 data networks passing targeting information in real time so that every fighter jet, every destroyer, every helicopter knows exactly where every threat is at every moment. You cannot hide from this sensor suite. It is not possible.
The Arleigh Burke destroyers alone carry the AN/SPY-1 phased array radar system capable of simultaneously tracking hundreds of contacts and automatically queuing weapons to engage them. When you layer that on top of the F/A-18’s own targeting pod, the Global Hawks above, and the electronic warfare coverage from assets like the EA-18G Growler, Iran’s IRGC Navy is fighting completely blind against an opponent that sees everything. The EA-18G Growler is one of the aircraft in this conflict that almost nobody is talking about and it deserves serious attention. It is a two-seat electronic warfare variant of the F/A-18F Super Hornet. Its entire mission in life is to find enemy radar systems, jam them across the full electromagnetic spectrum, and then use AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles to home directly on the radar emissions and destroy the source. The Growler’s loadout includes four AGM-88 HARM missiles, an AN/ALQ-99 tactical jamming system capable of flooding enemy frequencies across the entire spectrum, and the ALQ-218 passive electronic support receiver that geo-locates enemy radar emissions without transmitting a single watt. The Growler knows exactly where the radars are before the radar even knows it is being hunted.
And we saw this capability demonstrated with brutal clarity when Iran shot down a US MQ-9 drone operating over international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. Within hours, CENTCOM responded. Qeshm Island’s radar network was completely gone. The drone command and control node at Garak, the entire brain of Iran’s surveillance operation over the strait, gone. Two Iranian one-way attack drones that were already airborne and locked onto ships were neutralized. When the Growler enters the threat envelope in passive mode, the moment an IRGC radar activates to track anything, the ALQ-218 geolocates it instantly. The HARM fires, homes on the emission, and the radar site ceases to exist. And that brings us back to where Iran stands right now because the internal picture inside Iran’s decision-making structure is just as important as what is happening on the water.
There are two structural facts about Iran’s leadership that are not making it into the official statements, but that are driving everything you are seeing. First, there are real and deep fractures between IRGC hardliners and more moderate government elements. Those fractures make it genuinely difficult for the United States to get a coherent response from Tehran, even when moderate factions privately want to engage and end this conflict. Second, the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who took over from his father after his assassination early in the conflict, is reportedly injured and in hiding underground. Any deal that Iran makes needs to be ratified by the supreme leader, but there are serious questions about whether he is even accessible to the people trying to negotiate on Iran’s behalf. That is the structural impediment that is keeping this conflict dragging on, even while Iran is being militarily and economically decimated.
Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, stood up publicly and declared:
“We have not even begun yet.”
That is the official public posture, defiant, unyielding. Meanwhile, the same speaker posted messages urging Iranians to brace for economic hardship and calling thriftiness:
“A missile that people can fire into the heart of the enemy.”
Think about what that actually means. Iran is losing $500 million a day because of this blockade. Their response is telling their own population to be frugal. That is what the crushing blow looks like from inside the regime. Their navy is at the bottom of the ocean. Their fast attack boats are being wiped out by Apache helicopters. Their oil tankers are being surgically disabled by F-18s. And their answer is thriftiness. The economic picture cannot be understated. The Strait of Hormuz typically moves 20% of the world’s daily oil consumption. That waterway has gone dark for Iranian exports. More than 400 kg of highly enriched uranium, refined to levels approaching weapons grade according to the IAEA, remains unaccounted for in underground facilities that the US military has already briefed President Trump on plans to physically retrieve. The IAEA lost access to Iranian nuclear sites on February 28th, the day the war started, and has not had a single inspector back inside since. The agency’s director general called it a profound safeguards emergency. The Washington Post has confirmed the US military briefed Trump on a plan involving flying excavation equipment into Iran and constructing a runway inside Iranian territory for cargo planes to extract the nuclear material. A mission of a type that has never been attempted before in history.
On the diplomatic side, President Trump has been holding the carrot in one hand and the USS Abraham Lincoln in the other. He told reporters that talks recently have been very good and that a deal is possible. He simultaneously posted on Truth Social that if Iran does not agree:
“The bombing resumes at a much higher level and intensity than what it was at before.”
That is the art of maximum pressure. Give the enemy an off-ramp so they can save face and back it up with carrier strike groups that will literally disable their oil tankers with cannon fire if they try to run the blockade. Iran’s supposed 14-point peace proposal, delivered through Pakistan on April 30th, demands a full US military withdrawal from the region, the lifting of the American naval blockade, the unfreezing of all Iranian overseas assets, war reparations paid to Iran, an end to all military operations including in Lebanon, and the creation of a new international control mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz. That is not a peace proposal. That is a ransom note written by someone who has apparently not looked outside their window recently and noticed that their entire navy is gone.
The US is fully aware that Iran is attempting to use the negotiation process as a stalling tactic while the IRGC hardliners consolidate internal power. Reports have emerged that Iranian President Pezeshkian submitted a resignation letter to the supreme leader’s office stating that hardline IRGC factions have completely taken over major government decisions and sidelined the civilian government entirely. Iranian state media denied this. But if there’s even a threat of truth to it, the people the United States is negotiating a ceasefire with may not actually control the people who are pulling the triggers. We saw that exact dynamic play out when Iran shot down a US MQ-9 drone over international waters while a courier carrying a revised memorandum of understanding for a 60-day ceasefire extension was literally physically in transit to Khamenei’s underground compound. Both sides pulled triggers before the envelope was opened.
The IRGC Aerospace Force Commander, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, personally claimed credit for shooting down that drone on Iranian state television and personally ordered the ballistic missile response targeting American forces in Kuwait. Two ballistic missiles fired at US bases, both intercepted. Zero American casualties. And his justification, delivered with a straight face to state television, was that the IRGC reserves what he called the legitimate indefinite right to retaliate against any ceasefire violation by the United States. The United States, he said, violated the ceasefire by flying a surveillance drone over international waters while Iran’s hardline factions were actively shooting at commercial shipping, firing missiles at Gulf state partners, and publicly vowing to push Iranian enrichment to 90% weapons-grade purity if strikes resume. That is the credibility gap the IRGC is operating with right now.
Meanwhile, the operational reality is this. Close to 200 US aircraft are orbiting the skies above and around the Middle East at any given moment right now. The red, white, and blue dome, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called it, is active and covering the entire theater. The 82nd Airborne Division is coordinating AI-enabled intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance across the entire operational area. The USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS George H.W. Bush are both on station. Arleigh Burke destroyers are holding the line at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. A-10 Thunderbolt, America’s legendary close the air support platform with its 30-mm GAU-8 Avenger cannon and laser-guided rocket pods, is positioned as the premier fast attack boat and drone killing platform in the theater. The F-15E Strike Eagle, with its weapon systems officer in the backseat, is plinking one-way attack drones with APKWS laser-guided rockets at $25,000 per shot against Iranian drones that cost $30,000, effectively making money every time it engages. And the F-18 Super Hornet, now proven in direct surface action, is serving as the surgical enforcer of the entire blockade.
France is sending warships. The UK Maritime Trade Operations Authority has logged 46 separate incident reports since February 28th alone, including 26 ship attacks, 18 suspicious activity reports, and two ships hijacked by IRGC Navy factions. South Korea has been invited by President Trump to join the mission after Iranian forces struck a South Korean cargo vessel. The coalition of nations that Iran’s extortion of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed together against them grows every time the IRGC presses the button. And that is ultimately what this entire situation reveals about Iran’s strategic position. Their navy is gone. Their fast attack mosquito fleet has been cut down from a doctrine required 20 to 40 boat swarm to six boats on May 4th. And all six of those are at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. Their radar networks on Qeshm Island and elsewhere are being systematically eliminated by Growlers and precision strikes. Their surface-to-surface missile sites that were used to fire at US destroyers during the Project Freedom Transit have been degraded. Their ability to build ballistic missiles and drones has been set back by Operation Epic Fury’s targeting of defense industry infrastructure. Their supreme leader is underground and reportedly injured. Their civilian president may have resigned. Their parliament speaker is telling people to be thrifty. And an F-18 just surgically removed the rudder from one of their oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman with a half second cannon burst.
The WC-135R Constant Phoenix nuclear sniffer aircraft has been confirmed operating out of Al Udeid, Qatar and Diego Garcia. That aircraft exists for one purpose. It carries directional gamma sensor systems and radiation monitoring equipment to detect radioactive material in the atmosphere. Its presence in the CENTCOM theater is not coincidental. It is watching. It is listening. And the special operations forces, the Delta Force operators, the Nightstalkers from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the same aviation units that flew the Neptune Spear mission into Pakistan for Osama bin Laden, are all theoretically within reach of those underground uranium storage complexes at Isfahan if the order is given. The 4D chess game here is operating on multiple levels simultaneously. Diplomatically, Pakistan is mediating. China is being pressured directly by Secretary of State Rubio to use its economic leverage over Iran. Beijing imports a significant share of its oil through Hormuz and is not a neutral bystander.
Militarily, the blockade remains in full effect with fighter jets now proven willing to disable vessels by direct cannon fire. The Project Freedom humanitarian mission has freed stranded commercial ships. The kill chain from Global Hawks to Growlers to F-18s to Apache helicopters is synchronized and operating continuously. And the nuclear retrieval option sits on the table as perhaps the most significant strategic card the United States has not yet played. The gap between Iran’s public posture and their private reality has never been wider. Publicly, they have not even begun. Privately, their parliament is telling people to be frugal because they are hemorrhaging $500 million every single day. Their IRGC hardliners are seizing full control of a government while simultaneously losing every military engagement they attempt. Their mosquito fleet sent six boats and got back zero. Their oil tanker ran the blockade and got its rudder shot off by a cannon burst from a fighter jet. Their radar networks are being hunted by electronic warfare aircraft that locate them the moment they transmit a single watt. Their uranium stockpile is being tracked by nuclear sniffers flying overhead while special operations forces train for tunnel breach operations.
The United States military right now has dozens of fighter pilots blasting off the USS Abraham Lincoln. It has up to 200 Air Force fighters and bombers at Middle East bases ready to light this conflict back up if the diplomatic off-ramp is rejected. It has Apache helicopters and Seahawk helicopters that achieved a 100% intercept rate on day one of Project Freedom. It has Arleigh Burke destroyers carrying 96 missile loadouts holding the line at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. It has an electronic warfare architecture that can blind the IRGC’s entire drone interdiction network in a single strike package. And it has F-18 Super Hornets that can surgically disable a 300-ft oil tanker with a half-second burst from a Vulcan cannon. Iran’s mosquito fleet, the asymmetric naval doctrine that the IRGC spent decades building and perfecting, the capability that US military planners war-gamed against for years, the last real card Iran had to play in the Strait of Hormuz, is being wiped out one engagement at a time. Six boats on May 4th, zero returning. The doctrine that was designed to overwhelm large warships in shallow waters failed completely against Apache helicopters and Seahawk crews who were already pre-positioned and waiting. And the F-18 Super Hornet, now unleashed as a surface enforcement platform, means that even the larger Iranian vessels running the blockade are not safe anywhere in the Gulf of Oman.
The writing on the wall in the Strait of Hormuz is written in 20-lb cannon fire, and it reads exactly the same way in English as it does in Farsi. The blockade is in full effect. The mosquito fleet is finished. The surgical precision of American air power has elevated this entire operation to a level of enforcement that Iran simply has no answer for. Not their fast boats, not their drones, not their missiles, not their radar networks, not their parliament speeches about thriftiness, not their public declarations that they have not even begun yet. When an F-18 Super Hornet locks its targeting pod onto your rudder from miles away and a Vulcan cannon turns it into scrap metal in half a second, you have very much already begun and you are very much already losing. That is where we are right now. The next move is Iran’s and the clock is ticking.
