I'm not an expert or anything, but don't modern day drone capabilities mean that aricraft carriers are easy to destroy or incapacitate?
The Houthis are using medium range Iranian drones to attack ships, but they have mostly been failures since they are easier to shoot down. Also, being controlled from land limits the numbers and makes vulnerable to jamming. They also don't have range to catch carriers out at sea.
The longer range "drones" that Iranians have developed could change things. They are basically slow cruise missiles, not drones. But they could be used in large numbers because they are cheap. There is no indication they have developed anti-ship guidance which would bump up the price. However, they haven't had much effect in Ukraine, Israel, or Red Sea.
Also, we haven't seen what counters to drones look like. The same guidance for autonomous drone could lead to accurate cannons taking them down. Cheap missiles could mean cheap defensive missiles to shoot down all the drones.
And even a direct hit wouldn't come close to sinking an aircraft carrier. You'd probably need a dozens of direct hits.
Multiple direct hits from torpedoes couldn't even sink an old, decommissioned aircraft carrier.
Cruise missiles were not effective.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_United_States_...
One other factor is that they mostly work for shore defense since carrier or aircraft would use more effective weapons.
Direct hit would hurt a carrier. I don't we have warhead sizes for Iranian ones but normal anti-ship missiles are 500-1000lb. Those probably wouldn't sink but could cripple it, forcing it to withdraw or knocking it out of action which makes more vulnerable.
Shahed payloads are 100lb.
This is so deep into hypothetical territory.
They can't even fly far enough to make it to an aircraft carrier in the first place.
They'd get shot down by hornets, long before they arrived, if they even could.
You'd need a swarm of 10k of these to even attempt taking on an aircraft carrier.
Iran can barely produce 1k per year.
The US is building & decommissioning multiple aircraft carriers per year.
If you think 10 shaheds even pose a threat to a lone Destroyer, you're kidding yourself.
There's a reason an aircraft carrier has never been sunk.
I thought Iran was selling Russia low-cost long-range cruise missiles but hard to find article with drones and ballistic missiles. The Houthi do have copy of Iranian copy of Kh-55. The fact that rebels can build anti-ship missile, even a few, should be concerning. It means that more capable countries could build hundreds and overwhelm carrier group.
Lots of aircraft carriers have been sunk. Are you thinking of only nuclear supercarriers? Cause of there has been no war where one could have been sunk. The Forrestal fire shows that they are vulnerable to a single rocket (Navy firefighting has gotten better as result). It doesn't matter if they are scuttled if destroyed by fire.
Not a single aircraft carrier has been sunk in combat.
There were also multiple carriers sunk by submarines. Torpedo counts as "in combat" and a few were in battles. Yorktown was crippled by bombers and then sunk by Japanese submarine. Zuikaku was quickly sunk by aircraft in Battle of Leyte Gulf. If you are talking about gunfire, HMS Glorious was sunk by Scharnhorst.
So what are you talking about? Do you mean "post-war", "with missiles", or "supercarrier"? Cause you should say that.
Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sunken_aircraft_carrie...
Wouldn't aircraft carriers be able to shoot
down slow cruise missiles extremely easily?
1. Lots of other types of missiles, like hypersonic ballistic missiles.
2. You generally shoot down missiles with missiles. Your carrier group has a finite supply of missiles. I believe it's around a few hundred. There are close-in weapons systems but they're kind of a last resort and I don't know if they can counter ballistic missiles.
3. A carrier group can only shoot down X targets at a time. Nobody knows the exact value of X. But imagine dozens or hundreds of missiles, drones, etc. at once.
4. Even if you don't hit the carrier it can't take off and land planes while undertaking evasive maneuvers. (see the Battle of Midway for an early example)
And even a direct hit wouldn't come close to sinking
an aircraft carrier. You'd probably need a dozens of
direct hits.
Now one of these would probably do nothing against a carrier. It wouldn't reach it, and if it would it wouldn't get through the armor. But a bigger swarm can overwhelm your defenses and repeatedly hit the same spot to get through armor. They can be mass-produced, and no matter how much firepower and armor you bring your enemy can always spend less money than that on just making more drones.
They are also something new that nobody has developed defenses for. The US has working on small boat defense, so maybe improved guns will work for drones.
One variant that would be interesting are semi-submersible drones.
A modern carrier group has plenty of air defences and anti-drone capabilities to hold off a small- or medium-sized enemy, and it would still provide a very useful mobile platform to bomb them from.
If our basically defunct navy can deal with Iran drones and missiles, then I’m fairly certain an aircraft carrier can.