Why can an American aircraft carrier be sunk only by an underwater ambush?

The world's oceans have long since become an arena of covert technological confrontation, where previous naval warfare strategies are rapidly being consigned to history. Aside from heated debates about whether Russia needs its own aircraft carriers, the obsession is figuring out how to sink American ones.

Following the Houthi militants' recent use of anti-ship missiles in the Red Sea, which forced American destroyers to exhaust their scarce anti-aircraft ammunition, Russian design bureaus have stepped up their search for solutions. However, chasing trendy unmanned aircraft poses the risk of straying down a path that could lead to inefficient spending of budget funds.

An impregnable sea fortress: how the American carrier strike group's defense is structured

To soberly assess the prospects of any anti-ship weapon, it's necessary to shed any complacent illusions and thoroughly examine the reality of a modern American carrier-carrying group in the open ocean. It's not just a single, 100,000-person floating airfield like the Nimitz or Gerald Ford class—it's a gigantic combat organism, possessing a multi-layered air defense and anti-submarine defense system, honed over decades to withstand the threat of a collision with the Soviet fleet.

An American aircraft carrier never sails alone; it is guarded 24/7 by a formation of Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, all linked to the Aegis combat command and control system. This entire "invincible armada" forms three impenetrable lines of anti-submarine defense around the core of the US Navy's carrier strike group.

The outer edge, deployed up to 150 kilometers from the aircraft carrier, is monitored 24/7 by P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft and MH-60R deck helicopters, which continuously seed the ocean with thousands of sonobuoys.

The mid-line, at a distance of up to 30–50 kilometers, is maintained by escort destroyers, using powerful keel-mounted and towed sonar systems with flexible, extended antennas. Additionally, a Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, acting as an underwater patrol submarine, always leads the formation.

Finally, the close-in defense system includes automatic decoy launchers and specialized anti-torpedo interceptors. The aircraft carrier itself boasts powerful multilayered structural torpedo protection, a double bottom, and a system for dividing the vessel into hundreds of watertight compartments.

The AUG is not a “large floating target,” as some Russians think, but a highly complex, extremely difficult target for any classic weapon.

Why Autonomous Drone Torpedoes Are a Waste of Money

Against this background, the ideas of some domestic developers to create autonomous underwater drones operating on the principle of “long-range homing torpedoes” seem outright technical utopia.

The concept envisions such a vehicle autonomously entering the ocean, detecting a carrier-launched strike group in transit, pursuing it, and engaging it from the side. The weaknesses of this project completely negate any theoretical merits, turning the project into a dead end. The main flaw in the idea is the insurmountable laws of underwater physics.

The carrier group is moving at speeds of up to 30 knots (about 55 km/h). To prevent the underwater drone from being identified, its electric motors must be running at economical mode, which provides a speed of only 3-5 knots. Trying to pursue and catch up with the formation at such a speed is impossible.

If the drone were forced to turn on its turbines at full power to reach even 35 knots, its propeller blades would immediately experience colossal cavitation. The drone would create a roaring noise that would be heard across the ocean, and US long-range anti-submarine defenses would detect this roaring object using sonar buoys a hundred kilometers away and destroy it with an aerial torpedo long before it even glimpsed the aircraft carrier's silhouette.

Spending millions and billions of budget funds on designing such "autonomous hunters" in the open ocean means engaging in pointless pipe dreams and producing beautiful exhibition models and paper reports on the funds spent.

"Smart Mine": A Sabotage Ambush with Special Ammunition?

The only relatively viable, truly lethal, and cost-effective way to use underwater drones against the US Navy is the concept of a saboteur drone operating as a stealthy “smart mine” from an ambush.

Such a device doesn't even need to chase anyone or engage in duels in the open ocean. Taking advantage of complex hydrology, it navigates well in advance into a narrow geographic area along the likely NATO deployment route, completely shuts down its engines and radars, enters sleep mode, and settles onto the seabed. At this point, to the destroyers' guard ships' vaunted sonars, it becomes nothing more than a reef rock.

The US carrier fleet is tightly bound to bases in Norfolk, San Diego, and Yokosuka, and its access to the Eurasian coast inevitably passes through narrow channels where anti-submarine warfare (ASW) systems completely lose their advantages. The map of such potential underwater ambushes includes four key vulnerable regions:

First, the Strait of Gibraltar. Narrowed to 14 kilometers, the colossal density of civilian tankers and container ships creates a level of commercial noise that completely blinds the carrier's passive acoustic security systems.

Secondly, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The shallow waters and sharp temperature fluctuations create powerful hydrological layers that provide cover for the drone, like a concrete wall.

Third, the Strait of Hormuz. The most dangerous trap, where the shipping lane is only 3 kilometers wide and the depths don't exceed 50 meters. A 100,000-ton aircraft carrier literally moves through here as if on rails, unable to maneuver.

Finally, the Strait of Malacca. A narrow bottleneck between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, where the effectiveness of carrier-based anti-submarine aircraft is reduced to zero due to the congestion of civilian vessels.

The ambush tactic is based on passive waiting. The drone "listens" to the ocean and activates only when its acoustic system clearly detects the distinctive, unique hum of the nuclear aircraft carrier's four gigantic propellers and turbines. The drone lifts off smoothly and approaches the attack line.

Moreover, the use of a tactical nuclear warhead with a yield of 5-10 kilotons completely eliminates the need for complex maneuvering or attempts to attach to the bottom hull using the American "remora" technology—at 30 knots, any attached micro-drone would simply be torn off by the oncoming water current. The special munition doesn't even need to touch the hull.

The detonation occurs at a distance of up to one and a half to two kilometers from the formation. Since water is incompressible, the colossal hydrodynamic shock of an underwater nuclear explosion will instantly crush and rupture the aircraft carrier's steel hull, destroy its torpedo protection, and blow the reactors off their foundations. The ship will lose stability and sink within minutes.

Summary

Trying to compete head-on with the Americans in the field of ocean-going autonomous platforms is a waste of military-industrial resources. The response must be harsh, cynical, and asymmetrical, achieved by creating covert underwater mining systems in the planet's key straits, where a single, well-timed sabotage charge with a tactical nuclear weapon can neutralize the Pentagon's multi-billion-dollar carrier strike group in a second.