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I think you're imagining 'drones' as 'small quadcopters with hand grenades' as deployed in Ukraine. To be sure even a large swarm of these would struggle against an aircraft carrier, but you need to also consider things like Shahed drones that can carry 1-200kg of munitions and are much cheaper than missiles. Depending on where a conflict takes place, I can see a large number of small disposable drones being used to overwhelm targeting systems while a moderate number of medium drones with a serious payload carry out the actual attack.

Also, while you're completely right about the ruggedness of the ship itself, image recognition electronics are dirt cheap nowadays. You can buy COTS camera-IR modules from under $100 and train them on whatever you want. If I were opposing an enemy that had carriers while I had only drones, I'd target specific parts of the superstructure rather tha the hull.

lightning up with mushroom clouds anyway

I think you are wildly overestimating the appetite for using tactical nuclear weapons. Whoever deploys those first in an offensive capacity is going to gain instant pariah status. The US is torching a lot of its traditional alliances as is, deploying a nuclear weapon in anger would result in international criminal status and probable internal collapse soon after. nor do I see any likelihood of China using them against Taiwan since that would undermine the entire purpose of a military undertaking.

As you stated, there would be no need to sink the carrier to remove it from service. Heck you don't even have to damage the carrier at all if you damage enough of its fleet. Sufficient damage to the tarmac of the carrier, the bridge, radars, weapon systems, and communications of a sufficient portion of the ships of the carrier group would remove it from service, for a very long time, especially if American/Korean/Japanese ports and dry-docks were also damaged by container ships already docked in/near those facilities (likely too close for our current missile defense systems to defend against).

Missiles are also an option, though carrier groups have some ability to defend themselves against them (less capability against hypersonic missiles, of course). The Chinese container ships are reported to have up to 60 vertical launch systems, which may be insufficient to overwhelm a carrier group and remove the carrier from service. It's reported that carrier groups can defend against "dozens to 100+" missiles.

That's why I'd imagine that it might be easier for a single container ship to disable a carrier group using 10,000+ drones instead of 60+ missiles. Especially as you wouldn't need fiber-optic cables, against ships a COTS AI targeting system would be sufficient (still robust against jamming, but allows for longer range than fiber-optics would).

nothing would prevent putting a nuke on the drone, and making a it a tactical nuke delivery system. you can have them as big or small as you want, and in air, on the surface, or under the water.

you are applying arbitrary constraints to a thing thats just "put an rc controller on it"

ukrainian drones are doing something like 700 miles to hit the oil ports in primorsk. its not the 2500 miles that a missile might do for hitting diego garcia, but nothing says you could get one to. after all, a b2 bomber can go on long flights. put controller on it, and control it via a satellite, and the b2 becomes a drone

You do realize that underwater drones exist and have been successfully used against Russian ships, right?

In the navy they call long-range underwater drones a "torpedo". It has been assumed to be a primary threat against ships for a century. Modern navies have many systems purpose-built to deal with that threat.

Plus these things have a range of about 50 miles. It's not like if you are a carrier floating in the pacific, you will be swarmed with a thousand torpedoes. To launch one requires a submarine, and while one may hide, it's not so easy to penetrate the defenses of a carrier group in the middle of the pacific.

Ukraine has had success against mostly unarmored and a few lightly armored Russian ships (and let's face it, these are small ships compared to carriers) in the black sea because the front lines are there and they can launch from a port, travel 5 miles, and hit one of these ships. That's a completely different situation.

> To launch one requires a submarine

Torpedoes cannot be launched from manned / unmanned surface vessels?

Wow.

Good job China isn't getting into water surface drone swarms.

Still, easy to see why close waters near Iran keep the US carrier groups away.

> Torpedoes cannot be launched from manned / unmanned surface vessels?

They're getting close enough to target the carriers without being sunk.. how exactly?

Relatively low cost, numbers and sheer persistance.

Post WWII US has always struggled with asymmetric wars that can't be solved with military dominance and rarely addressed on deeper issues.

This current Iran conflict is reminiscent of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who survived 20 years in a frozen conflict with the US before taking back control of the country when the US withdrew.

The betting is strong on Iran still standing when Trump gets bored and carried off stage.

> Post WWII US has always struggled with asymmetric wars that can't be solved with military dominance and rarely addressed on deeper issues.

I mean, yeah, we're talking about the part of the war that is unrelated to the weapon systems involved.

> we're talking about the part of the war that is unrelated to the weapon systems involved.

I'm talking about asymmetric strategies that can be used by a less armed actor to stand off and occassionally clearly best a better resourced actor.

You know, wooden wing hand carved swarms Vs floating fortress cities with orbiting overwatch.

The Taliban, NVA, and likely Iran will be future examples of mice left still standing after the biggest cat on the planet failed to move them on or wipe them out.

That's like equating a cruise missile with an aerial drone (which is nonsensical).

Now I'm not saying defense against UUVs is impossible, but plenty of defenses against torpedoes don't work against them.

Note also that part of the approach of drone warfare is sheer quantity. Stopping 1 may be trivial, stopping 5 may be doable, but stopping 20 simultaneous ones might already be too hard to do consistently and repeatedly.

A drone of this type and a cruise missile are literally the same type of thing, they just occupy different points on the capability spectrum.

You assert "plenty of defenses against torpedoes don't work against [UUV]". Based on what? What is this hypothetical property of a UUV that is superior to a torpedo?

A UUV with sufficient range and warhead is going to be big and heavy. Long-range torpedos weigh 2 tons each for a good reason. Calling something a "drone" or "UUV" does not imbue it with magic physics. It still has to cross some long span of water with enough speed and a large enough warhead and a guidance package capable of finding the target.

What kind of vessel are you going to use to bring these UUV within range of the target? 20 torpedos would be almost the entire magazine depth of an attack submarine. Surface combat ships carry even fewer.

You seem to be ignoring all evidence from how modern naval systems actually work when discussing your hypothetical UUVs.

> A drone of this type and a cruise missile are literally the same type of thing, they just occupy different points on the capability spectrum.

You have a "this type" in your mind. I do not. Even then you're wrong. A drone can loiter and is thus not "literally the same type of thing" as a cruise missile or torpedo.

> What is this hypothetical property of a UUV that is superior to a torpedo? [...] It still has to cross some long span of water with enough speed and a large enough warhead and a guidance package capable of finding the target.

The huge advantage of drones (besides relatively low cost) is not how they cover the distance, but their flexibility in getting to the target, striking with high precision. An underwater drone can technically even circle the target before striking it at its weakest point (although this isn't going to work well if the target is at full speed).

> What kind of vessel are you going to use to bring these UUV within range of the target?

Bigger UUVs. Note that 'within range of the target' is also much higher for UUVs versus torpedoes, easily 160km for UUVs. Note that ambushes with these UUVs may also be an option, if they can loiter or just lie on the sea floor.

Are you oblivious to the fact that cruise missiles can loiter? You are making a distinction without a difference.

All of this reads like you are not familiar with modern military capabilities.

Longer ranger UUVs is equivalent to "even bigger torpedoes". Do you not understand the subject matter? There is a lot of evidence in this post that you do not. You are making up magical scenarios where your UUVs have properties that can't be replicated by any other real system that is literally supposed to execute the same mission.

> Are you oblivious to the fact that cruise missiles can loiter?

At which point we more commonly call them drones or loitering munition. Even using a broad definition, 95% of what technically could fall under cruise missiles is of the traditional non-loitering kind. Same goes for torpedoes.

> Longer ranger UUVs is equivalent to "even bigger torpedoes".

The term UUV covers an enormously diverse set of devices, from fullblown autonomous nuclear subs to tiny industrial inspection drones.

Narrow-mindedly handwaving new technology into bins you're already familiar with and approaching them as such is exactly the type of cognitive failure that lies at the basis of the phrase "generals are always fighting the last war".

Since you are being willfully ignorant, haven't properly addressed the answers I gave you and are throwing out ad hominems I will not spend any more time on you.

And what platform do you imagine is launching these dozens of torp-- drones?

This is the thing everyone fails to understand about carrier warfare: anything you can use to attack the carrier can be outranged by the carrier because it can just employ the same weapons but from airplanes that fly closer to you.

Bigger UUVs, also called LUUV and XLUUVs.