A $6B Nuclear U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier 'Sunk' by $100M Diesel 'AIP' Sub
55 comments
·October 8, 2025OG_BME
adastra22
That’s just good typography and editing.
empiko
My exact reaction. I noticed the repetitiveness. Count how many times they reiterate the point that this was a shock for the US Navy.
labrador
It's a given that aircraft carriers will be sunk in an all out war. They're useful to project power in anything less than an all out war, which fortunately is most of the time.
Edit: I'm a former nuclear submarine sailor. We call aircraft carriers 'targets'
psunavy03
While I support inter-branch shit-talking, even from you bubbleheads, when push comes to shove, CVNs aren't "targets" for SSNs. We're on the same team, fighting against our true enemies . . . the Army and the Air Force.
labrador
But seriously... Google returns this for the keywords 'falkland war submarine aircraft carrier submarine sights periscope'
"During the Falklands War, the British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror used its periscope to sight the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano before sinking it, but did not engage the Argentine aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo. The carrier was also stalked by British submarines but ultimately retreated and was never attacked."
psunavy03
Yes, 40 years ago, a submarine sunk a WWII cruiser. ASW is a thing, and subs are a legitimate threat. But this is also why we have submarines, because the best tool for hunting a submarine is another submarine. But claiming this magically makes aircraft carriers obsolete is largely internet fanboy noise.
The US military trains and fights as a team, and the entire point is to use the strengths of one platform to protect the weaknesses of another and vice versa.
nocoiner
Isn’t “targets” just all non-submarines?
stoneman24
Actually Other submarines are also prospective targets until proven to be allies.
Great profession for the paranoid, everyone else trying to find you.
Worked in shipyard with submariners, who are great people once you get to know them.
adastra22
Once you stop being targets, you mean.
cperciva
I thought "targets" was just anything designed by civil engineers.
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exabrial
Wasn't this exercise completed years ago? The article is dated 7 days ago which is surprising.
dmix
Submarines similar to spamming ballistic or antiship missiles is one of those things we'll never really have a full answer for. There's only so many sonobouys you can drop in a huge ocean you need to transit. Ships just like soldiers will always be expendable at some level.
markemer
Isn't this like the exact plot of Down Periscope?
boricj
It depends, did they sing Louie, Louie while cosplaying as a fishing trawler?
psunavy03
This "news" was 20 years ago.
davey48016
The survivability of aircraft carriers in modern warfare has been in question since the 1980s.
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa134.pdf
psunavy03
"In question" != "proven." Sure, Tom Clancy wrote a whole chapter on what would or wouldn't have happened if the Backfires had sortied from Murmansk. But it's funny how the people who push the idea of carriers being obsolete are the military equivalent of the chattering classes, not the people whose job it is to fight and win wars.
Armchair admirals can pontificate all they want.
mbreese
That doesn’t necessarily make it uninteresting. One can always learn from surprises by competitors, military or commercial.
kitd
Interesting (to me) that the AIP is based on a Stirling engine. It's the first time I've heard of one being used at scale. No doubt HNers will have countless other applications at their fingertips, but to me they've always been only theoretically useful desk toys.
numpy-thagoras
This wasn't the first time a diesel-electric has caused havoc for US Navy expectations during a war game.
The article even mentions the added use of layered defence to try and counter this move.
jakedata
My takeaway from this story is that as an (aspiring) billionaire I can buy an awesome Swedish submarine for less than the cost of a crazy megayacht.
Unfortunately, skull shaped volcano islands are harder to come by.
ActorNightly
You would also need to find a crew to run it. Which requires either a) ex military dudes with direct experience b) extremely talented engineers who can reverse engineer stuff and make it work.
For either, you are going to have to spend basically close to 5 mill a year just on salaries.
palmotea
> You would also need to find a crew to run it. Which requires either a) ex military dudes with direct experience b) extremely talented engineers who can reverse engineer stuff and make it work.
If you're buying a submarine, I'd assume the manufacturer would provide crew training on how to operate it. It's be kinda dumb if they didn't.
digdugdirk
That's the same ballpark as running a mega yacht. So instead of cruising into the Monaco Harbour to watch an F1 race, you get to park yourself on the seafloor just outside the harbour and single handedly blockade a sovereign nation.
IAmBroom
Why not both?
Geez, you non-supervillain-aspiring types are so ... mid.
ARandomerDude
You also need a construction team to insulate the lair and install trap doors over the lava.
jacquesm
Given how the last Nordic submarine adventure by some tech moron ended I think we can do without that.
mongol
For those that miss the reference:
gottorf
Billionaires don't exactly have a great track record in submarines. A crazy megayacht, or even a regular yacht, might serve you better!
softwaredoug
Ukraine has had success sinking large vessels with drones etc, so it doesn’t seem surprising the lessons of this articles are even more true today.
maxglute
Wonder if US/USN is even institutionally capable of moving away from carrier expeditionary model if on paper it's borderly demonsntratbly not survivable. Feel like too much of US national prestige is tied to muh 11+10 carrier+lhd literally legislated into law (10 US Code 8062a). Too much big dick energy ego tied to arguably obsolecent platform, well at least for peer war.
andrewl
The article did not say carriers were demonstrably not survivable in warfare. Or it said that that was not the conclusion of the navy.
The lesson wasn’t that aircraft carriers are obsolete; it was that air-independent propulsion and patient SSK tactics demand layered, disciplined, team-based ASW. ... The U.S. answer isn’t to panic about aircraft carriers; it’s to layer defenses and distribute risk—push the air wing’s reach (tankers, long-range weapons), fill gaps with manned and unmanned ASW platforms, and keep expanding the fleet’s acoustic picture with fixed and mobile arrays. The Gotland episode didn’t say “carriers are obsolete.” It said “carriers must be escorted by a navy that trains, equips, and fights as if quiet SSKs are everywhere.”
ActorNightly
There are 2 things that are VERY classified when it comes to US military.
First is missle defense capability
Second is sonar.
I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.
TLDR; US is never going going "win" wargames because its not a good idea to showcase the true capability. Same reason why F22 and F35s "lose" to other jets - US purposefully nerfs them and flies them at decreased envelopes.
IAmBroom
> I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.
I'm in optics, not sonar, but I have a hard time believing that sound waves are such unbelievably reliable tools for accurate FFT's of a target. Ultrasonics begin at 100 mm, while "long" visible light is 200x shorter (and wavelength is proportional to resolvable detail). Noise and dispersion in the ocean are significant.
Reminds me of when the CIA planted stories that they could recover data from multiply-erased hard drives using electron scanning microscopes. Possibly - one bit at a time.
pqtyw
Or maybe the Typhoon is actually better than the F35 and F22 at dogfighting and general "within visual range" combat. But its unlikely that would really matter in a real war, F35 doesn't need to be good at those things if it just shots you down long before you know its there.
loloquwowndueo
Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?
Also ignore me, all I know about air combat I learned from top gun and iron eagle.
dralley
Rules of engagement and the fact that nobody was properly trained on tactics that worked with the missiles. IIRC only the air force added a gun to the F4, the Navy just improved their training regime, and ended the war with better kill ratios than the air force.
Plus the early missiles just had some problems that were fixed over time.
spankibalt
> Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?
Not only ROE limitations, but unreliable missile technology (see the "Red Baron" reports for example) and bad tactics as well. The Navy was better than the USAF in both respects.
pqtyw
Well in Ukraine both sides are generally too afraid to get their jets anywhere near the frontline and just use them to launch long range cruise missiles and such from a safe distance.
Air defences are just too effective and modern jets are so expensive that nobody can really afford to risk losing them.
Maybe F-35 could change that, it seemed very efficient in Iran. But AFAIK Iran didn't have anything better than the S-300 so it wasn't exactly a fair fight...
rafale
That's one way to nerf them, force them to fight in situations they would never find themselves in.
In real life, if they can't neutralize the threat in BVR they just turn around and run before getting in range.
Their stealth allows them to get the enemy in range before the enemy has them in range. It's like a boxer with a long reach: jab and move.
MengerSponge
The F35 RFQ specification had two bullet points:
0) Spread the pork into as many congressional districts as possible
1) Omae wa mou shindeiru
adastra22
I’m sorry, but you clearly don’t know anything about the F 35 development program. It is held up as an exemplar case of preventing congressional pork, as every single development and integration contract was competitively won on a best-value basis.
null
vjvjvjvjghv
I think it’s pretty clear that these shiny super expensive weapons systems will be overwhelmed by cheaper autonomous systems like drones . They are good for bullying less capable adversaries but I think in an all out war they won’t have a good time. As far as I have read the F22 has never been used in combat because it’s too expensive to lose.
jncfhnb
Ehhh I think it’s all moot. These high end weapons aren’t 1000x better than 1000 cheaper weapons that cost 100000x less.
How many jet powered or submersible drones can an aircraft carrier defend against?
The writing style of this article is interested, on one hand, it's packed full of details and information like a well-researched, human-written article.
On the other, there are many ChatGPTisms, it's not this, it's that, groups of 3 terms, em-dashes, etc.
My thinking is that there was a thorough draft written by a human that then was passed through an LLM and heavily modified. Not that there's a problem with that.