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Comment by fatbird | Hacker News Reader

Because they're the greatest peacetime weapons system ever invented. Until hot war breaks out, which seems increasingly unlikely under the umbrella of nuclear weapons and MAD, they are the premier force projection tool around--in essence, the best bluff a superpower can make, and crucially, it's worked since WW2.

That said, while incidents like Sweden "sinking" a carrier have happened and embarassed the Navy, carriers have been present in multiple wars since WW2 (Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Iraq War) and haven't been sunk. If it's really that easy, one would think it would have happened when enemies actually were motivated to inflict such a loss. This suggests that the wargame conditions aren't very reflective of actual doctrine.

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The conflicts you mentioned were against non-peer adversaries. The belligerents had no naval or offensive air power to speak of.

People here keep citing the wargames with retired Gen. Riper, who sank the USN repeatedly from the perspective of a non-peer adversary using non-technological methods to organize, and disposable, low value swarming assets to overwhelm American defenses. Both Iraq and North Vietnam had patrol boat navies and the wherewithal to invest in attacking a carrier, but didn't.

This was the Millenium Challenge in 2002. Another interesting war simulation that seems the U.S. did not learn their lesson.

https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r...

I guess the simplest answer is they didn't launch an attack because they couldn't. Specialized torpedo boats cannot generally penetrate a destroyer or cruiser screen without assistance. There is no viable way to even get into position to threaten a carrier as such a movement will be detected on radar long before a threat materializes. Even when American ships engaged in offensive operations close to the north Vietnamese coast they came out on top in clashes involving patrol boats making a large offensive operation unappealing.

The red force in the millenium challenge had access to significant capabilities that Iraq and Vietnam did not have access to such as incredibly accurate anti-ship cruise missiles.

I thought the assumption was the the US attack subs would clear the area before a carrier would get there.

IIRC, the embarassment of the Swedish incident was that US attack subs didn't catch the Swedish sub, which lay dormant on the seafloor until it could pop up and blast the carrier in the props.

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