Though I do worry about the possibility of a more sophisticated opponent being able to launch swarms of drones and missiles at aircraft carriers. More than any air defense could ever stop.
There's been a whole ramp up of very exquisite technology to try to get the upper hand here, but I don't expect we'll see the carrier be the force it has been over the last few generations. It's just too tempting a target.
You can afford to spend a few million when you’re taking down billions of dollars worth of hardware.
I would think a simultaneous barrage of maneuvering hypersonic missiles would pose a much bigger threat. A CIWS or three can take down a lot of slow drones.
and send that number + 1 drone.
.
.
of course it's a bit oversimplified, but really with decoys, and putting cheap shaped charges on them ... they can fuck up the launch/landing surfaces, the AA capabilities, there's absolutely no way to jam them if they have the "last mile" set to automatic.
(yes, in theory a dumb and big fireball or good old flack can take out a lot of them, seems trivial, but in practice we don't see that, instead we see faster drones trying to intercept them)
Or you know, lob 12 anti ship missiles at it and call it a day.
The reason so many tankers have been lost and that E3 sentry is that the carriers are having to stay out of the preferred range and rely on refueling for the bombing campaign.
If the CSG could move to the Iranian coast they wouldn't have to maintain a constant chain of refueling tankers which have become so vulnerable.
umm, you have no idea what you are talking about.
the Iranian Shahed drones typically have an operational travel distance of approximately 1,200 to 2,000 kilometers (roughly 750 to 1,250 miles).
and
>USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) CSG: As of March 30, 2026, this strike group is operating in the Arabian Sea supporting Operation Epic Fury. Satellite imagery from mid-February and March 2026 placed the Lincoln roughly 700 kilometers (approx. 430 miles) off the coast of Iran and Oman.
Now, does it have the kill chain to supply it with an accurate targeting fix and update it during the flight? Or, does it have a radar good enough to find the Lincoln on its own? If it doesn't, then it's a really big ocean. But sure, they've got the range.
Of course the CSG and its advanced weaponry are going to obliterate them before they have a chance to do anything.
The Shahed-136 could 100% find the ship if Iran had the intel on the CSG location.
Regarding drones they are, by definition, not very sturdy: for they're drones and not B52 bombers or bunkers.
What's very likely going to happen is that, just I can take a Browning B525 Sporter balltrap shotgun and shoot any civilian drone from afar because the gun shoots an expanding cloud of tiny, cheap, pellets, armies are now going to come up with systems to both defend and destroy drones.
I'm not saying the drones used in war are the same as DJI drones: what I'm saying is that with the proper tech, they're much less expensive to take down than, say, a ballistic missile or an aircraft carrier.
Anyone seeing this conflict and thinking that the militaro-industrial complex isn't hard at work working on solutions to take down drones is smoking heavy stuff.
Ukrainian and Russian did it already (although it's nothing serious, it's just an example): here we were talking about actual tiny drones, carrying explosives, and running towards vehicles. As a cheap defense measures, they started immediately adding metallic "spikes" (not unlike hairs) to the vehicles, so that the drone wouldn't reach the vehicle's body and instead explode when hitting the mettalic spikes.
War has always been about "tech x" / "anti tech x". This time is not going to be different.
> Though I do worry about the possibility of a more sophisticated opponent being able to launch swarms of drones and missiles at aircraft carriers.
China. They're demos of thousands of drones fully synchronized in the sky at night making nice 3D patterns with everybody on the ground going "aaaah" and "wooooow" is a display of military capability.
I'm not saying it's not a concern: but it's not as if the US (and others) were going to sit and think "oh drones exists, the concept of war is over".
Just the warhead alone on a standard anti-ship weapon weighs more than an entire Shahed-136 drone.
To render it useless for a while is easier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire
All from a little drone-sized warhead.
(~20kg warhead)
This is Trump's America, brother, we don't learn from the past here!
Unfortunately warships have a lot of flammables and explosives aboard.
Of course, this assumes the carrier is within range of the drone swarm, but that seems to be the assumption in this line of argument.
Eventually, I think they'll have more cost-effective defenses against small, cheap drones, but they don't have them yet.
You can use a thousand and break pretty even if you get even one good hit in.
Many nations can blow stuff up but to actually project power, you need a mobile air base.