5 Weapons That Could Actually Sink A US Aircraft Carrier

Modern aircraft carriers operated by the United States Navy are massive, highly advanced floating cities capable of extending the nation's might across the globe. The latest addition to the fleet, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), is the most advanced aircraft carrier and largest warship ever constructed. That makes it a target, but rest assured that sinking an aircraft carrier is no easy task. Not only are they outfitted with their own air wing, but an aircraft carrier has layers of defenses protecting it.

These include point defense weapon systems to take out threats from the air and sea, and a massive Carrier Strike Group consisting of several warships offering additional defenses. While sinking an aircraft carrier is all but impossible these days, it's still technically feasible. After all, they're targets, and countries like Iran, China, and Russia all have weapons that are theoretically capable of sinking a carrier. Granted, if a nation like China sank a U.S. carrier, it would mean full-scale war.

There are a variety of weapons and tactics available to various nations should they attempt to sink a carrier. For the sake of argument, this scenario assumes that all of a carrier's defenses have been overcome. No weapons will be shot out of the sky or blown out of the water, leaving only the possibility of a weapon or tactic striking a carrier, sinking it. That leaves only the technical possibility of what could bring down a 100,000-ton warship, and thankfully, there aren't many weapons capable of doing so.

Getting the most obvious weapon type out of the way, it's highly unlikely that an aircraft carrier would survive a nuclear attack. This isn't merely a theoretical supposition — the U.S. tested nuclear weapons on surface vessels during Operation Crossroads in 1946. The tests took place at Bikini Atoll and were the first detonations of nuclear weapons since the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II. Operations Crossroads tested two nuclear bombs near the island.

The Navy assembled a fleet of 95 target ships in a lagoon and hit them with two nuclear detonations to test their effectiveness against naval targets. The target fleet included two aircraft carriers, and while the first bomb missed its target, the second didn't, sinking the USS Saratoga. The Saratoga was a Lexington-class aircraft carrier that was commissioned in 1927, so it wasn't exactly comparable to a modern-day Nimitz or Ford-class carrier.

Despite this, the test showed what happens to a large fleet of surface vessels when struck with a nuclear bomb, and it was devastating. The bomb dropped on the Saratoga was called "Baker," and it had a yield of 21 kilotons. For comparison, a modern U.S. nuclear device typically has a variable yield, so they can range from 0.3 kt to as high as 340 kt. Chinese devices also have wide ranges, entering into megaton territory, so there's little doubt that a modern American carrier wouldn't survive a direct attack with a nuclear weapon.

While it seems logical that a submarine could fire a torpedo at an aircraft carrier and call it a day, it's more complicated than that. Torpedoes represent a great danger to aircraft carriers, but not all types of torpedoes can bring down something as massive as a Ford-class carrier. Depending on what kind of torpedo is used, several might be required, or the damage to a ship could be limited. Instead of assuming a volley of torpedoes is fired, which is difficult to do, let's look at lone heavy conventional torpedoes.

Certain heavy weapons, like the deadliest torpedo in the world, America's Mark 48, would likely sink a carrier, but the U.S. Navy isn't in the habit of shooting its own torpedoes at its ships. There are adversarial nations with comparable devices, including the Russian Type 65 torpedo. The Soviet Union developed it specifically to fight U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Groups, and is the device responsible for the sinking of the Kursk in 2000.

China's answer to the Mk. 48 is the Yu-6, a heavyweight torpedo with a high-explosive yield. They appear to be copies of the U.S.' weapon system, which isn't unusual in the Chinese military. The reason these devices could theoretically destroy a carrier is how they're employed. Instead of slamming into the hull, they move beneath the keel and detonate. The resulting underwater explosion can break a ship in half, which has been demonstrated in tests of the Mk. 48.

A relatively new threat to aircraft carriers is a new group of hypersonic missiles. These are missiles capable of exceeding Mach 5 (3,836 mph), and their lethality comes from two factors. Their speed makes them all but impossible to intercept, but they also deliver a double-helping of destruction via kinetic energy and the weapon's warhead. Since we're not considering air defenses for this thought experiment, the weapon's lethality presents a clear and present danger to American aircraft carriers.

As of writing, only Russia and China have operational hypersonic anti-ship missiles, and they're designed to destroy carriers. Russia's 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missile is believed to be capable of reaching Mach 9 (6,905 mph). Russia has used these in a land-attack capacity in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Should one be fired at an American carrier and hit it, the odds are that it would sink. Granted, that depends on where it strikes the carrier, but regardless of location, the damage would be spectacular.

China's deadliest hypersonic missile is the DF-ZF, which is theoretically capable of reaching up to Mach 10 (7,673 mph). Even if it didn't carry a warhead, the kinetic energy of an object weighing thousands of pounds, moving at more than a mile a minute, would likely be enough to take out a carrier. Of course, China wouldn't fire one without a warhead, so add the explosive capabilities of a conventional bomb onto what amounts to the missile equivalent of a sniper's bullet, and a carrier's survival becomes problematic.

If there's one thing that the Russo-Ukrainian War has revealed, it's that drones can be used in new and fascinatingly deadly ways. This has resulted in new tactics and technology, including the concept of swarms of kamikaze drones overwhelming a target. Ukraine has successfully employed small uncrewed surface vessels (USV) to strike and sink ships in Russia's Black Sea fleet. They've not been used to hit any aircraft carriers, as Russia only has one, and it's not active.

While a small drone can cripple a much larger vessel, the real danger comes from swarms of USVs. If a hostile nation or paramilitary force were able to develop a large enough fleet of USVs, each of which was packed with explosives, it's possible that they could chip away at a carrier's hull, damaging it to the point of sinking.

This would not only be an effective military tactic, but it would also be a relatively inexpensive one. The USS Ford cost American taxpayers over $13.3 billion, but a drone swarm would likely only cost hundreds of thousands or a few million, depending on size and complexity. The cost-to-benefit ratio of sinking a carrier with such a tactic would be a significant blow, which is one of the reasons the U.S. Navy takes the threat of drone swarms seriously.

Finally, the last weapon that poses a significant threat to an American aircraft carrier is easily the oldest and most conventional. If an adversary were to take a large ship like an oil tanker and fill it with explosives, that ship would become a massive weapon. If it were then directed toward an aircraft carrier and made to ram into it, there's a good chance the carrier would sink. This attack combines kinetic energy with conventional weapons into one devastating blow, and it's not new by any stretch of the imagination.

In 2000, two terrorists piloted a small bomb-laden boat right up to the USS Cole (DDG-67) and detonated. The blast didn't sink the Cole, but it ripped a 40-foot-wide hole into the hull near the waterline, killing 17 sailors and injuring another 40. The Cole is an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, which is significantly less massive than an aircraft carrier. If multiple ships or a much larger one were to employ the same tactic, the destruction wrought upon a targeted carrier could be devastating.

The Cole displaces approximately 9,700 tons, making it less than one-tenth the mass of the USS Ford. The vessel that exploded on its side was a small, inflatable speedboat. If you scale up the size of the attacking vessel to something that would threaten a carrier's size, the amount of destruction is conceivable enough to destroy an American carrier. The Navy detonates bombs near aircraft carriers during shock tests as a precaution against these kinds of attacks.