What [I]would[/I] it take to disable a Nimitz class supercarrier?

I once read about an entire DC-10 jumbo jet being dismantled all because someone stole a jar of concentrate garlic oil in his baggage and it ruptured. One gallon of garlic oil for a carrier then?

Re: igniting the fuel stores. The Nimitz is nuclear-powered, I hope no one forgets that. As to the jet fuel and the crude oil refinery, I think a carrier’s fire fighting system is equipped enough to handle fires from those places.

Interesting idea. To make it work, you would need to make it a legitimate charter flight. Have the pilot issue a radio mayday and claim he has to make an emergency water landing. This he will attempt to do near the carrier group do they can assist in rescuing the survivors. This gives your a plausable story to get your aircraft near the carrier. Let down like you’re going to ditch, at the last moment you change course and ram the carrier near the water line with your large commercial aircraft. Make sure your aircraft is loaded to the holds with high explosives. If you try a suicide attack without the cover of an emergency, you’ll never get close enough to the carrier group before they shoot you down.

How 'bout this for cost efficiency and elegance:

Only a few hours after the carrier left known port, or is at sea of known location, a commercial airliner flies above, along a well-traveled route. But SEALs parachute from it at night, guided by GPS and some other communication. What I know is SEALs land on water, inflate a motorized raft, and pursue the ship. But this is iffy for a 30+ knot carrier. Heck, they’ll land right on the flight deck. They’ll plant explosives where they can: parked planes, fuel and ordnance, elevators, detonate, and either jump ship or simply surrender.

There are so many potential problems with this. Programming your rogue APS system and making sure nobody catches the back door. Installing it on the relevant planes of the right airlines. Finding the carrier group’s location and rerouting a civilian airliner with enough fuel there at the right time. Assuming that you won’t be escorted by fighters on your way to the ditching and won’t be blown out of the sky if you stray off-course and towards the carrier. Assuming that the carrier group will let you get anywhere near it instead of sending you to a predesignated patch of ocean away from itself, and then sending another ship or a bunch of helicopters to rescue you. Assuming the CIWS won’t shred you once you get close. Etc.

Maybe if you put all that effort into embedding an actual rogue Navy pilot instead, he can kamikaze into the control tower during landing?

also from Wikikpedia:
Torpedo Mine
The torpedo mine is a self-propelled variety, able to lie in wait for a target and then pursue it e.g. the Mark 60 CAPTOR. Other designs such as the Mk 67 Submarine Launched Mobile Mine[36] (which is based on a Mark 37 torpedo) are capable of swimming as far as 10 miles through or into a channel, harbor, shallow water area and other zones which would normally be inaccessible to craft laying the device. After reaching the target area they sink to the sea bed and act like conventionally laid influence mines. Generally, torpedo mines incorporate computerised acoustic and magnetic fuzes.
The U.S. Mark 24 “mine”, code-named FIDO, was actually an ASW homing torpedo. The mine designation was disinformation to conceal its function.

5 years to plot standard routes and waypints, lay the mines and wait for the Carrier Batlte Group to pass by.

Not if Steven Seagal was the cook.

At which point the pilot pulls the circuit breakers, killing power to the rogue autopilot, and then proceeds to land the plane manually. In an emergency the pilots can even kill all electrical power to the flight controls and land with nothing more than hydraulic power provided by the engines. There’s really no way to override the flight controls in a way that can’t be worked around, at least without massively altering the flight control system in a way that would be impossible to hide.

I would assume there’s a version of that statement which would be true of current-generation fly-by-wire airliners?

:confused: STS?

Sonar technician, submarine.

Cite? Sounds weird.
ETA: thanks, rnatb, quick.

STS = SONAR Technician, Submarine.

Destroying a U.S. Carrier by any means would be an immediate act of war.

Destroying any U.S. lives or infrastructure via nuclear means would be an excellent way to turn your entire country into a radioactive parking lot. (North Korea, Iran, I’m lookin’ at you both…)

Build, buy, or refurbish a suitably heavy mortar, get it into range of the carrier’s homeport, and hit the ship while it’s tied up at dock?

Bonus in that you’d implicitly threaten all the other carriers’ ports, at least as long as it would take to make a security check of everywhere in artillery range of the docks, without actually having to move any weapons into the US or Japan.

^
Get a Davy Crocket launcher instead and come within 1.1 miles of that carrier while at anchor.

Yes, I didn’t get the irony, because irony is a device used to highlight the contrast of the literal meaning of something with the figurative meaning of that same thing.

But I will admit that there was as much irony present in the “dropping a match in a fuel tank” statement as there is irony in situations such as: 1) a black fly in your Chardonnay; 2) rain on your wedding day; and 3) a free ride when you’ve already paid.

I reject being irony-proof, but I can be difficult.

These were almost all annoying lyrics, for an album I really like (mainly due to the producer). Only #3 is ironic. Isn’t it?

Writing a song called ‘ironic’ without a single example of irony – now that’s ironic.

How do you make sure that your sabotaged airplane flies anywhere near the carrier group?

U.S. naval forces have shown they are perfectly willing to shoot down civilian airliners that aren’t doing anything at all suspicious. You’ve got no chance.

But seriously, anti ship missiles are the way to go. They’re cheap, easy to launch, and especially the more advanced ones, will get though often enough to make them viable.