Hacker News Reader

Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

A Shahed is only useful against stationary soft targets, which an aircraft carrier is not. It also doesn’t have the kind of heavy warhead or terminal guidance required to defeat the armored structure of naval ships. Shahed doesn’t have any kind of countermeasure avoidance. Adding these would massively increase the cost.

Naval anti-ship drones have been around for many decades. This is a highly evolved area of military technology with a long history of real-world engagements upon which to base design choices.

The standard naval anti-ship drones are Harpoon, Exocet, and similar. These are qualitatively more capable than a Shahed and you still need a swarm of them to get through.

View on HN

"The standard naval anti-ship drones are Harpoon, Exocet, and similar. These are qualitatively more capable than a Shahed "

Those are called guided rockets and of course are more capable but also way more expensive.

Shaheds can and did get basic guidance very cheap. Add a video, basic image processing to find big grey object in sea as target, send them radio controlled in the right direction .. so when they get jammed, they autonomously find that big target.

And you surely can blind/shoot down a couple. But we were talking about 10000 of them at once. The carrier would maybe not sink, but it would burn.

> An Iranian Shahed drone costs about $35,000

If that's right, then 10000 would cost $350 million. That's a lot of money to spend to not sink a carrier.

Ok, if there are really 10000 in a attack at once, I am pretty sure a carrier would burn so much, it is basically scrap metal. But I suppose 1000 already, or even 100 at once would be a serious threat with grave damage. I suppose we will find out sooner or later.

And now the cost has increased again, because you need to field enough simultaneous launches to get 10k in the air at the same time. It doesn’t mean you need 10k launchers, but you still need a lot

Yeah, but those launchers are really cheap. Just a metal rail and a booster (and alternatives are possible, Iran has lots of steep mountains).

right, but like, 10,000 of them? that's a lot and only a small fraction of the cost of more capable systems of destroying an aircraft carrier

>A Shahed is only useful against stationary

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/18/russian-drone-hits-...

https://en.usm.media/chinese-vessel-comes-under-attack-in-th...

>or terminal guidance

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-shahed-dive-bomb-shah...

I can bankrupt you before running out of my arsenal of Shahed drones if you’re spending 1000 times the cost of a drone to bring it down.

The U.S. is incredibly rich but not that much richer.

Suppose the ship is immobilized or under tow after hitting a mine for example. Or even just in port in range of cheap dumb drones.

Basically these make it much more likely you loose ships if they stop moving for any reason.

If your aircraft carrier is mobility kill what are you even doing? These things operate in a group with supporting vessels for a reason. Never mind that the point of a carrier is that its air group can reach out pretty far so you don't have to drive where the mines are.

I feel like this and many other responses are missing the point, e.g. focusing on the specifics of a current Shahed drone.

My main thesis is that the cost of small autonomous drones have dropped enormously over the past 20 years, and that increasingly drone swarms look like a much more capable and cost effective way of waging war than giant, incredibly expensive, slow moving targets. These giant but powerful machines (not just aircraft carriers but also things like tanks) are simply poorly suited to the future (and maybe even the present) of warfare.

> These giant but powerful machines (not just aircraft carriers but also things like tanks) are simply poorly suited to the future (and maybe even the present) of warfare.

There's a whole new generation of infantry fighting vehicles and tanks being designed and metal bended right now with that very threat in mind.

Not to mention tons of short range air defense supporting systems.

> My main thesis is that the cost of small autonomous drones have dropped enormously over the past 20 years, and that increasingly drone swarms look like a much more capable and cost effective way of waging war

And how about the cost of drone countermeasures? Ukrainian interceptor drones are already a fraction of the price of a Shahed, and drone jamming systems are evolving at a lightning pace. Every weapon development seems like an unstoppable game changer until an effective defense is widely fielded, but that defense does tend to wind up getting fielded, or the offensive technology is completely superseded, by the time the next major conflict breaks out.

In the current Iran conflict not a single US warship has been damaged by a drone or similar system. Iran is among the leaders in drone technologies and started the war with a substantial stockpile. The US navy had not previously gone up against an adversary in the drone age and all of its ships were designed prior to the start of the Ukraine war. If there was ever a time where a large number of drones could overwhelm a ship with inappropriate defenses, it would have been then. In 5 years there isn't going to be a combat vessel in any first rate navy without dedicated counter-drone defenses and every officer will be well versed in counter-drone tactics. The best drones in the hands of the most experienced units may still be able to defeat these countermeasures, but the idea that you're going to overwhelm an aircraft carrier with 10,000 cheap drones is a fantasy.

And yet the U.S. navy is unable to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has no reason to take down a U.S. ship. In fact, it will try and avoid it as much as possible because taking down a ship would be an insult the U.S. would have to respond to with an incredible escalation of violence.

The purpose of the Shahed drones arsenal right now is to allow Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz, which it is achieving despite many promises/threats by the U.S. to wrest control from Iran, and to economically damage the US’s partners in the Middle East so they contribute pressuring the U.S. to end the war.

Thats also something Iran is achieving.

Modern Shaheds can be controlled through satellite links like StarLink, with high quality video. Also, targeting a large pile of metal in the sea should not be difficult with something like a radar.

This underestimates the requirements. It requires sophisticated real-time terminal guidance. This is not a cheap feature. Modern anti-ship drones dynamically select a precise point of impact based on their observation of the target to maximize probability of hitting a vulnerable spot. Especially with a weak warhead like the Shahed, most points of impact would be scratching the paint.

The model you are talking about was basically how things worked in the 1970s. Technology has improved a lot over the last half century.

For now only the USA has reliable access to anything like Starlink / Starshield. Radar isn't any kind of magic solution: it has limited range and field of view.

Any kind of radio control should be discounted when attacking a US carrier fleet, they will just be jammed.

Autonomous optically guided missiles/drones would fare better, but those are still vulnerable to being blinded by laser systems like HELIOS[0], and of course being shot down by anti air missiles or CIWS.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Energy_Laser_with_Integra...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com