What I find amusing about all of this is the notion that the US Navy had no idea there were Russian fighters and helos in the vicinity. They saw them from at least 50 miles out, knew their intentions since they weren’t carrying weapons and probably had a laugh knowing the Russkies would politicize this to make Obama look weak.
If the jets had visible weapons on it, the Russkies wouldn’t have gotten within 50 miles of the ship. The US would have had planes scrambled as soon as it was evident there were weapons.
This was no big deal.
We were tracking them precisely from the time they took off. And knew their mission within 2 minutes after that.
And of course those 23mm rounds from the internal gun would have done no harm to anyone or anything. Stranger things have happened.