Admiral Charles Bradford “Brad” Cooper II, Commander of U.S. Central Command, speaks at a news conference at U.S. Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, on March 5, 2026. (Octavio Jones – AFP / Getty Images)
By Joe Saunders March 6, 2026 at 8:26am
If there’s ever time to correct the boss in public, Adm. Brad Cooper found it.
The career military man and U.S. Central Command commander took the stage during a news briefing on Thursday to update reporters on the progress of the ongoing military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And he took good news Trump delivered earlier and turned it into even better news — at least for viewers rooting for the American side.
Check it out here:
ADMIRAL BRAD COOPER: “You may have heard the president say, just a little while ago, that we have sunk or destroyed 24 ships.That was true at the moment, we’re now up over 30 ships.”
“In just the last few hours, we hit an Iranian drone carrier ship, roughly the size of a World… pic.twitter.com/DD3TREXp9u
— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 5, 2026
“You may have heard the president say, just a little while ago, that we have sunk or destroyed 24 ships” in the Iranian navy, Cooper told reporters.
“That was true at the moment. We’re now up over 30 ships. And in just the last few hours, we hit an Iranian drone carrier ship, roughly the size of a World War II aircraft carrier. And as we speak, it’s on fire.”
Going into 2026, the Iranian navy included 90 vessels — mostly smaller amphibious and patrol boats, according to GlobalMilitary.net, a website that tracks international armed forces through open-source data.
That would mean fully one-third of the Islamic Republic’s naval fleet is either underwater or otherwise out of commission.
Among the most notable of the Iranian losses was the IRIS Dena, an Iranian navy frigate sunk by an American submarine in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday.
Not only was it the first warship sunk by a U.S. Navy submarine since World War II, it was far away from the main theater of fighting, demonstrating the Trump administration’s resolve — and ability — to hunt down Iranian war vessels wherever they are on the globe.
Considering the fact that the U.S. Navy has been engaged in simmering, low-grade hostilities with Iranian vessels for years in the Persian Gulf, the demonstration of American might is sent the unmistakable message that the gloves are off.
But it’s also doing more than sending a message. It’s creating a new reality: The Iranian navy is not only no longer a nuisance to the U.S. in terms of seapower in the Persian Gulf, it’s teetering on the verge of extinction.
And Cooper is making sure the world knows it.
Correcting the boss is generally a bad idea. Correcting the boss in front of the international media is generally worse.
But Cooper picked pretty much exactly the right time and place to do it.
And he did it with some very good news for Americans who are on their own country’s side.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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