Define destroying one of our carriers. Sinking it? Crippling it? Temporarily disabling it?
“Define destroying one of our carriers. Sinking it? Crippling it? Temporarily disabling it?”
The inability to successfully launch aircraft.
Now days ALL you have to do is blow the antennas off any ship and it's dead.
Out of the fight and a sitting duck awaiting destruction.
No radar, no comms, no aircraft control.
I suspect that getting hit with a 1,600-lb warhead at mach 2.5 (let alone a swarm of them) would sink pretty much anything, except maybe Iowa class battleships that were made to take hits from other battleships. IIRC those missiles were a major reason Reagan reactivated the old battleships.
” Sinking it”
Carriers are WWII relicts. They would be the first to go in a nuclear exchange. ICBM/SLBM are no longer just ballistic but targetable.