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I agree that this conflict in Iran doesn’t really indicate that the aircraft carrier is any weaker now than it ever was. Though I do worry about the possibilit

I agree that this conflict in Iran doesn’t really indicate that the aircraft carrier is any weaker now than it ever was. 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.

rustyhancock 6mo ago
I get the feeling you haven't read the article. The carrier is not in drone range precisely for that reason. 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.
- edm0nd 6mo ago
  >The carrier is not in drone range precisely for that reason. 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.
  - AnimalMuppet 6mo ago
    All right, they have the range. Let's say a carrier is 700 km away and the drone has a range of 1200 km. Great. 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.
    - edm0nd 6mo ago
      I was just correcting the dude and letting them know they 100% have the range and they are wrong. 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.
refulgentis 6mo ago
It sounds like you agree vehemently with the article, modulo the reframe of what the military had to already as solely your personal worry, about a hypothetical, that could only occur with a more sophisticated opponent, in the future.
TacticalCoder 6mo ago
> ... drones 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".
switchbak 6mo ago
Carriers have been in question long before this conflict. There's been a big question as to how effective and/or survivable a carrier battle group will be in the South Pacific, especially given China's long range anti-ship missiles. 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.
- jojobas 6mo ago
  Long-range anti-ship missiles of old are also obsolete, they and their launch problems are also too expensive for their vulnerability. A salvo Shahed-style drones launched from expendable unmanned vessels would overload a carrier group air defences way cheaper than old school ASMs from frigates.
  - switchbak 6mo ago
    New weaponry poses great challenges for these platforms. I don’t know if a swarm of very slow moving drones would be my biggest concern though. 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.
    - pas 6mo ago
      but if you know there are 3 CIWS, you know they can move the pew-pew pipe at some radians per second this axis, and that axis, you put the drones in a formation to maximize the need for muzzle movement, estimate how many rounds are in them (or how long can they fire before getting overheated) 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)
JackFr 6mo ago
Carriers aren’t going away because there’s nothing else that does what they do. Many nations can blow stuff up but to actually project power, you need a mobile air base.
jandrewrogers 6mo ago
Cheap drones are pretty useless against large naval vessels. Making a dent in those ships requires a heavy, specialized penetrating warheads. And even then you'll need to score several hits. Just the warhead alone on a standard anti-ship weapon weighs more than an entire Shahed-136 drone.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago
  To sink it, yes. To render it useless for a while is easier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire All from a little drone-sized warhead.
- fsagx 6mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire (~20kg warhead)
  - jandrewrogers 6mo ago
    That was over half a century ago. Completely irrelevant.
    - thedrexster 6mo ago
      > That was over half a century ago. Completely irrelevant. This is Trump's America, brother, we don't learn from the past here!
    - fsagx 6mo ago
      Seems likely to be even worse now. USS Ford out of action, removed from region due to "laundry fire" and some socks in the toilets. Also USN has far fewer carriers to deploy. Three or more were deployed continuously off Vietnam for years at a time.
- newsclues 6mo ago
  You could fly an FPV drone into the hangar and smash a plane full of ordinance if you get lucky. Unfortunately warships have a lot of flammables and explosives aboard.

rustyhancock 6mo ago

I get the feeling you haven't read the article. The carrier is not in drone range precisely for that reason. 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.

edm0nd 6mo ago
>The carrier is not in drone range precisely for that reason. 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.
- AnimalMuppet 6mo ago
  All right, they have the range. Let's say a carrier is 700 km away and the drone has a range of 1200 km. Great. 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.
  - edm0nd 6mo ago
    I was just correcting the dude and letting them know they 100% have the range and they are wrong. 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.

refulgentis 6mo ago

It sounds like you agree vehemently with the article, modulo the reframe of what the military had to already as solely your personal worry, about a hypothetical, that could only occur with a more sophisticated opponent, in the future.

TacticalCoder 6mo ago

> ... drones 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".

switchbak 6mo ago

Carriers have been in question long before this conflict. There's been a big question as to how effective and/or survivable a carrier battle group will be in the South Pacific, especially given China's long range anti-ship missiles. 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.

jojobas 6mo ago
Long-range anti-ship missiles of old are also obsolete, they and their launch problems are also too expensive for their vulnerability. A salvo Shahed-style drones launched from expendable unmanned vessels would overload a carrier group air defences way cheaper than old school ASMs from frigates.
- switchbak 6mo ago
  New weaponry poses great challenges for these platforms. I don’t know if a swarm of very slow moving drones would be my biggest concern though. 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.
  - pas 6mo ago
    but if you know there are 3 CIWS, you know they can move the pew-pew pipe at some radians per second this axis, and that axis, you put the drones in a formation to maximize the need for muzzle movement, estimate how many rounds are in them (or how long can they fire before getting overheated) 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)

JackFr 6mo ago

Carriers aren’t going away because there’s nothing else that does what they do. Many nations can blow stuff up but to actually project power, you need a mobile air base.

jandrewrogers 6mo ago

Cheap drones are pretty useless against large naval vessels. Making a dent in those ships requires a heavy, specialized penetrating warheads. And even then you'll need to score several hits. Just the warhead alone on a standard anti-ship weapon weighs more than an entire Shahed-136 drone.

ceejayoz 6mo ago
To sink it, yes. To render it useless for a while is easier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_fire All from a little drone-sized warhead.
fsagx 6mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire (~20kg warhead)
- jandrewrogers 6mo ago
  That was over half a century ago. Completely irrelevant.
  - thedrexster 6mo ago
    > That was over half a century ago. Completely irrelevant. This is Trump's America, brother, we don't learn from the past here!
  - fsagx 6mo ago
    Seems likely to be even worse now. USS Ford out of action, removed from region due to "laundry fire" and some socks in the toilets. Also USN has far fewer carriers to deploy. Three or more were deployed continuously off Vietnam for years at a time.
newsclues 6mo ago
You could fly an FPV drone into the hangar and smash a plane full of ordinance if you get lucky. Unfortunately warships have a lot of flammables and explosives aboard.