Iran Can’t Sink A US Navy Supercarrier, But Tehran May Still Try

Crewmen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal hose down planes which suffered heavy damage in a fire aboard the ship, off the coast of North Vietnam, July 29th 1967. (Photo by UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

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Earlier this month, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made a direct threat against the United States Navy’s warships operating in the Middle East. In a social media post, Khamenei suggested the Islamic Republic could attempt to attack and even sink a U.S. Navy vessel, possibly an aircraft carrier.

“The Americans constantly say that they’ve sent a warship toward Iran. Of course, a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea,” Khamenei wrote on X.

It remains unclear what weapons the ayatollah was referring to, but Tehran is seeking to close a deal to buy Chinese-made CM-302 supersonic missiles, which have a range of about 290 km (180 miles). More ominously, the CM-302 is reported to have been developed to evade shipboard defenses “by flying low and fast.”

Beijing has been steadily developing so-called land-based “carrier killer missiles,” notably the Dong Feng-21D and Dong Feng-26B, but neither is in the Islamic Republic’s arsenal. Even if those weapons were available, experts are doubtful either would live up to the the carrier killer moniker.

Carriers Are Tough Warships

With its currently available weapons, it is highly unlikely that Iran’s military could sink a U.S. warship, and almost certainly not a carrier. Such warships are designed to take extensive damage.

That fact explains why the last United States Navy aircraft carrier sunk in combat was the Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea (CVE-95). It was lost just over 81 years ago this month, during the Battle of Iwo Jima after coming under repeated Japanese kamikaze attacks.

“Modern aircraft carriers are far larger and more resilient than their World War II kin,” noted Dr. Robert Farley, senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky.

“CVN-78 is 100,000 tons, some 150% the size of the largest WWII carrier,” Farley, who has written extensively on aircraft carriers, explained in an email. “All other things equal, larger ships are more survivable than smaller ships.”

The Nimitz-class USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), now operating in the region, and the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the newest and most capable flattop that is en route to the Middle East, are each equipped with advanced armament to counter aerial threats. More importantly, the warships are carefully screened by their respective Carrier Strike Group.

“A U.S. supercarrier is built to take punishment and keep fighting,” added geopolitical analyst Irina Tsukerman, president of threat assessment firm Scarab Rising. “The U.S. Navy also surrounds carriers with layers of defense: Aegis destroyers and cruisers, aircraft on combat air patrol, electronic warfare, decoys, and point defenses.”

Another consideration is that an anti-ship missile might not be enough to sink a carrier, even if one could penetrate the layered defenses of a carrier strike group.

“Much modern ordnance is designed with ‘soft’ targets in mind, which is to say that modern missiles aren’t really expected to be able to destroy a target as large as an aircraft carrier,” said Farley. “Modern carriers also have very sophisticated internal protection and subdivision schemes that make them difficult to sink. Long story short, it’s a very tough hill to climb.”

The USS America Wouldn’t Sink

This week, many armchair pundits and keyboard admirals have also been quick to post online that the U.S. Navy had a difficult time sinking the retired Kitty Hawk-class supercarrier USS America (CV-66) in a controlled exercise to test carrier survivability.

During a SINKEX live-fire test conducted in April and May 2005 off the Atlantic Coast, CV-66 proved extremely resilient, possibly more than expected. The carrier endured nearly a month of intense, weaponized testing and was finally scuttled via internal explosive charges.

It should be added that the warship had been decommissioned nearly a decade earlier and was in poor material condition. There were also no damage-control efforts to save the ship.

“The exercises with the former USS America demonstrated that a modern CV can take an enormous amount of punishment and remain afloat,” said Farley. “Indeed, USS America did not enjoy the most important part of a carrier’s survivability, which is a trained and experienced crew conducting damage control in real time at a massive scale.”

There Is No Such Thing As ‘Minor Damage’

The bigger consideration is that Ayatollah Khamenei may not need to make good on his promise of actually sinking a U.S. Navy carrier to score a potential victory for the Islamic Republic.

There is the old saying that “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” but a lucky strike on a carrier could still be devastating for the U.S. Navy.

In the 1960s, three United States carriers survived devastating fires caused by mishaps. That included an ordnance explosion on USS Oriskany (CVA-34), sparked by a mishandled flare. The ensuing fire engulfed the forward half of the carrier in October 1966, killing 44 people and injuring 156 more.

Less than a year later, in July 1967, a fire broke out on USS Forrestal (CVA-59), ignited by a misfired rocket. Bombs on the flight deck subsequently exploded, and fuel burned on the lower decks. A chain reaction of explosions resulted in the deaths of 134 sailors, with 161 more injured.

That incident led to new safety protocols, which may have helped in the response to the fire on the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in January 1969, when another Zuni rocket accidentally fired and engulfed the flight deck in flames. That blaze killed 28 sailors, injured 314, and destroyed 15 aircraft.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were then spent repairing each carrier.

“The destructive fires demonstrate that modern CVs are still vulnerable, in no small part because they carry an immense amount of flammable material on board,” warned Farley. “Missile attacks could disable a carrier by destroying its catapult system, its communications equipment, its arrestor gear, or otherwise making flight operations impossible.”

Farley noted that the decks are considerably more robust than those found on most WWII carriers, but destruction may not be the goal.

“The real concern is more that an airstrike could inflict sufficient damage on the flight deck and on hangar facilities to achieve a ‘mission kill,’ which is to say make the carrier useless until it can be repaired in port,” Farley continued.

Close Could Be Good Enough For Iran

Even a “minor” strike on a carrier could have outsized political consequences, as carriers are such an icon of U.S. power projection.

“The U.S. Navy can absorb losses, but American politics reacts instantaneously to symbolic damage,” said Tsukerman.

In an email, she suggested that a single successful impact would shift the conversation from “Iran is contained” to “U.S. forces are vulnerable.”

That would almost certainly strengthen Iran’s deterrence narrative overnight and even give Tehran leverage in diplomacy, as it proves it can raise costs quickly.

“It pressures Washington to choose between escalation and restraint under public scrutiny,” warned Tsukerman.

Tehran could then use an attempt to strike the Carrier Strike to test and map U.S. defenses. A probe, even a failed one, reveals how the U.S. responds, what it prioritizes, what it shoots first, what it jams, and how it organizes the battlespace.

“It’s not just Iran that’s paying attention. Its proxies, as well as China and Russia, learn by watching. That intelligence value alone makes an ‘attempt’ useful to Iran,” said Tsukerman.

The danger for Iran is the escalatory ladder it creates for Washington.

“An attack on a carrier or a serious attempt becomes a trigger for punishing retaliation. Iran accepts that risk because it believes it can manage escalation by controlling tempo and ambiguity, spreading attacks across proxies, and keeping the fight inside a threshold that makes Washington hesitate,” Tsukerman continued. “Iran’s leaders have spent years practicing calibrated pressure: enough to hurt, enough to warn, sufficient to claim victory, not so much that they invite regime-threatening retaliation. The carrier talk is part of that pressure strategy.”