If an American Aircraft Carrier Sinks in the Iran-US Conflict

Before the United States' attack truly commenced, the US military commander issued an ultimatum to the Iranian leader, demanding the total surrender of the country to US desires. The confidence of the US commander was based on the sophistication of the Aegis combat system and the ability to conduct large-scale airstrikes from their aircraft carriers.

Aegis is an integrated naval weapon system of satellites, missiles, and US combat aircraft, with multi-mission capabilities that include air defense, ballistic missile defense, surface attack, and undersea warfare within a single integrated system. This system has been developed by the US gradually since 1983 and by the year 2002 had already achieved a level of capability to intercept ballistic missile attacks in the stratospheric layer.

They estimate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will retaliate against the US fleet's attack with various naval defense missile systems, most of which are derivatives from Russian or Chinese allies. The missile trajectories are expected to be easily monitored by military satellites and early warning aircraft "Awacs," and neutralized by advanced US military missile algorithms.

However, behind the disparity in military capabilities between the US and Iran, Iranian military leaders have developed a clever concept of asymmetric warfare. Realizing that they would not win against the US using conventional strategies—only retaliating when attacked in accordance with the logic of conventional combat—they took an unexpected step: launching preemptive strikes at the weakest points of the US Navy with large missile attacks and small vessels.

Previously, they were already aware of the number of US SM-3 defense missiles and the ammunition that a single US aircraft carrier fleet can carry, which consists of an aircraft carrier and 5-6 destroyers/cruisers and submarines. Iranian thinkers plan to exhaust US ammunition due to a massive assault by Iran using small boats as decoys that independently carry missiles.

In addition, Iranian computer experts are already aware of the limitations of U.S. weaponry's computational capabilities in detecting attacks and coordinating counterattacks. A carrier will encounter difficulties when processing responses to massive attacks executed simultaneously in actual combat.

To carry out a secret and sudden preemptive strike, Iranian generals deliberately refrained from using any electronic radios that could risk leaking information to the United States. Instead, they employed traditional methods to coordinate their forces, such as sending messages via couriers, using light signal codes, and various silent ancient techniques reminiscent of the World War I era.

As a result, the electronic eyes and ears of the US forces did not suspect anything within Iranian territory and assumed that the Iranian government was about to surrender. Satellite surveillance also failed to distinguish between civilian and military activities, which turned out to be a coordination for a massive preemptive attack.

Iranian forces launched a massive and rapid attack. Hundreds of small, fast attack boats, a mix of civilian and military, were armed with high-explosive warheads or anti-ship missiles. Simultaneously, they launched a barrage of low-flying cruise missiles from land-based launchers, timed to arrive at the carrier group at the exact same moment as the kamikaze boats.

At the command center of the US aircraft carrier, the Aegis radar screen suddenly lit up with hundreds of "vampires," a naval term for incoming enemy missiles. The Aegis defense system, designed to track and destroy advanced threats from the Soviet era, was overwhelmed by the extraordinary noise from the fleet. The computer system could no longer distinguish between fishing vessels and missile-laden suicide boats to establish targets, resulting in a nightmare for the US Navy.

The 100,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, a center of technological ambition and a symbol of America's global might, suffered destruction in various locations and ultimately sank to the ocean floor along with five amphibious assault ships and ten accompanying cruisers. Casualties? It is estimated that they could reach 20,000 U.S. soldiers.

That is the picture of the defeat of the United States in a real military exercise (war game) carried out in the context of a confrontation between the United States and one of the countries with a radical leadership character at that time, either Iran-Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or Iraq-Saddam Hussein in 2002. Later on March 20, 2003, the United States and its allies launched Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and overthrew Saddam Hussein.

The Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) is a military experiment mandated by the U.S. Congress in 2000 to explore critical combat challenges at the operational level of warfare that U.S. joint forces will face after 2010.

This simulation is planned to last for two years and involves 13,000 combat troops. The Red forces (Iran/Iraq), led by retired Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper of the Marine Corps, employed many asymmetric tactics that were not anticipated by the Blue forces (U.S.).

At that time, US war game supervisors and US Department of Defense (Pentagon) officials were shocked that the network-centric warfare concept created by the Pentagon had failed and the myth that US aircraft carriers were invincible had been dispelled.

The Pentagon's network-centric warfare is a large and complex system of U.S. forces on the battlefield, connected through satellite links, instantaneous data integration, and digital architecture design. This concept aims to incapacitate the enemy quickly to ensure the course of battle and victory, although it has proven vulnerable to asymmetric tactics.

The Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a large-scale military exercise conducted by the United States Armed Forces under the Joint Forces Command in mid-2002, taking place from July 24 to August 15, 2002. This exercise involved live training and computer simulations, with a cost of 250 million USD (equivalent to approximately 448 million USD in 2025), making it the most expensive military exercise in US history up to that point.

The consequences of this simulation remain one of the most controversial chapters in modern military history. Instead of accepting defeat and learning how to address vulnerabilities, the exercise directors "re-floated" the aircraft carrier fleet. They ordered Red Commander Lieutenant General Paul K Van Riper to retreat and forced him to follow a new script that would ensure the Blue Forces' victory for the remainder of the three-week exercise.

Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, disgusted by what he called a staged play that ignored the realities of war, abandoned the simulation. He argued that the US military was lying to itself, ignoring the fact that aircraft carriers are "big floating targets" when operating in confined waters like the Persian Gulf or the South China Sea against a determined enemy (article “Wake up call,” The Guardian, 6/9/2002).

Now, the debate about the survivability of US aircraft carrier strike groups no longer revolves around the scenario of fending off a swarm of speedboats as was once raised in the 2002 Millennium Challenge simulation, although Iran appears to be continuing to use this tactic in the latest exercise with Russian warships in the Strait of Hormuz, 20/2/2026.

In the eyes of the United States, the focus of the threat from Iran's military capabilities has shifted from merely the quantity of small vessels to the precision and speed of hypersonic missiles designed to be "aircraft carrier killers."

This is because Iran, which has been developing the concept of anti-access or area denial (A2/AD) warfare/strategy in the Persian Gulf for years, now has a ballistic missile variant with terminal maneuverability and a hypersonic glide vehicle.

However, several military analysts such as Jack Watling (Royal United Service Institute - RUSI), Yehoshua Kalisky (Institute for National Security Studies - INSS) compared the Iranian missile which is considered to be below the capabilities of hypersonic ballistic anti-ship missiles such as China's DF-21D but remains a dangerous threat to aircraft carriers.

This type of missile launches at a certain phase outside the atmosphere, then dives back in at speeds exceeding Mach 5, while maneuvering to avoid interception. In the scenario of modern naval warfare, this combination of speed and maneuverability tests the limits of the most advanced defense systems possessed by the West.

On the U.S. side, the backbone of carrier defense is the Aegis Combat System, which integrates radar, combat computing, and vertical launchers into a single, unified network. The latest version, powered by the AN/SPY-6 active phased-array radar, is designed to “see the invisible,” distinguishing maneuvering hypersonic targets from background noise, decoys, and other atmospheric phenomena.

The trial deemed successful was the simulation code-named "Stellar Banshee" in March 2025. In this simulation, an Aegis-capable destroyer was tested to detect and track maneuvering medium-range ballistic missiles during the hypersonic phase.

Data from launch detections by early warning satellites is promptly processed by Aegis Baseline 9/10 software to establish a threat corridor for the enemy. The Aegis system attempts to identify targets and calculate firing solutions against objects moving at more than five times the speed of sound in an instant.

The United States relies on the RIM-174 Standard ERAM (SM-6) missile, which features an active seeker and is capable of pursuing targets during the terminal phase. This missile is regarded as the primary/best interceptor in the current Aegis system, although the U.S. is also developing the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) missile to destroy hypersonic missiles while they are still in the launch phase at high altitudes, before entering the final descent that is difficult to predict.

Technically, the "Stellar Banshee" test demonstrated that the processing speed and sensor integration of Aegis are sufficient to produce interception solutions against a single hypersonic target. But again, what if Iran launches its hypersonic missiles simultaneously?

A number of researchers estimate that Iran possesses between 2,000 to 3,000 ballistic missiles, a small portion of which are limited hypersonic series used to attack Israel during the Israel-Hamas war, particularly on October 1, 2024. At that time, it was estimated that 30 Iranian ballistic-hypersonic missiles were launched.

Nevertheless, the classic lesson from Paul K Van Riper's military simulation remains relevant; the defense of an aircraft carrier is a race between the number and speed of attackers against the processing capacity and ammunition of the defending side. In a saturation attack scenario where, for example, 20 hypersonic missiles arrive almost simultaneously, even the most advanced systems could potentially be overwhelmed.

The number of vertical launch system (VLS) cells/missile silos on aircraft carrier escort ships does not yet have a concept for VLS replenishment at sea and must return to port. Various conflict simulations show a relatively consistent pattern. Iran, although conventionally weaker, can exploit asymmetric advantages through naval mines, drones, land-based missiles, and cyber attacks.

In several scenarios, this tactic does not always mean defeating the United States military, but it can cause disproportionate damage and make the continuation of the war unfavorable in the eyes of the US government and its people. Moreover, there is the risk of global escalation if Russia and China intervene directly to assist Iran.

On paper, the US aircraft carrier remains a symbol of maritime supremacy. However, in the hypersonic era, that symbol is facing increasingly complex challenges. The arms race is no longer solely between missiles and fighter jets, but rather among algorithms, computing speed, and the number of missiles launched simultaneously.

In this context, the strategic question in the America-Iran tension is not only whether an aircraft carrier can be sunk, but rather what the political, economic, and military costs will be for all parties if the political tension truly escalates into a mutually destructive total war. (KOMPAS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT)