I think it's been obvious for quite a while that in a real war ships are now going to be pretty useless as they're far too vulnerable to cheap and easy weapons. The Houthis demonstrated this to folks who weren't aware or in denial, but it's been true for a while.
> Houthis demonstrated this
The Houthis have sunk 2 civilian ships, out of 30 damaged.
It's hard to sink a ship.
It's even harder to sink a military ship in prepared condition with a crew trained in damage control.
The USS Cole was reportedly hit with 1,000 lbs of C4 against the hull [0], while presumably not at battle stations, yet still managed to stay afloat.
Watch some of the sinkex's for what it takes to send a ship to the bottom (read: heavyweight torpedo). There's a reason they usually burn before they sink.
Holes full of air tend not to do a good job of sinking ships. Holes full of water are good at sinking ships. Small warheads aren’t going to be effective at making holes full of water. They may be good at blowing up stuff on top, that make the ship not useful for doing it’s mission though.
$1000 drones laden with explosives aiming for just above the waterline would seem to put holes in appropriately dangerous places.
You could launch a thousand of them for the cost of a single anti ship missile.
A reasonable thing to do in a modern war would be to launch 10,000 drones all at once at an aircraft carrier, even at a very low success rate that's a lot of little holes.
Just ask yourself how many you're going to need and what defense exists for them currently.
Shitty self-guided weapons can be made very easily these days and in tremendously large numbers. The defense industry focus is presently on very advanced things that it seems could trivially be overwhelmed by volume.
Double layer hulls? Compartmentalization? 1-8" thick steel plate?
When something floats, there are fewer restrictions on weight. CV-66 took a lot of direct explosions before going to the bottom.
The easiest way to think of modern carriers is ships inside ships, such that the entire thing stays buoyant even if most of the outside compartments are compromised.
Navies have been building steel ships for a minute... and are pretty good at it.
Welcome to the jeune ecole. The problem of $1000 drones is range and speed. A carrier is moving at 20kt, regularly. More if conducting flight operations. $1k drones are group 1 drones in DoD classification. There are limited in speed and range. If they teleported into range of the carrier, sure, they could reach it, and keep up with it. But if they don’t start near the carrier, how close do they need to start to do so?
To get holes at the water line, you’re going to have to take your drone down to the water line. Which means you’re going to have to deal with the waves and spray from being down there. Cheap drones are not notable for dealing well with hitting the water.
Beyond the thick steel plating, and compartmentalization, there’s also the fact that little holes just won’t let in much water. If you want to sink a ship, you need to let in more water than the pumps can take out.
If you start talking about $50k drones, then a bunch of these objections start changing. You can get much more range, much more speed, much larger warheads, and much greater capabilities in general. But your cost curve has changed a bunch, so you get 200 drones instead of 10k drones for a given amount of cash.
Vulnerable is not the same as obsolete.
Surface ships are still the only way to transport large quantities of troops and equipment over long distances. If you want to maintain the ability to project force beyond oceans, you need a navy to escort the vulnerable transport ships and to fight whatever threats they would be facing.
The Houthis haven't actually managed to hit any warships. In fact the opposite of what you claim has been demonstrated. The defenses work well, although at great expense.
Of course whether they can survive a determined attack from a near-peer adversary remains to be seen.
You grossly underestimate how hard it is to sink a warship. During SINKEX live fire exercises that use a retired US Navy ship as a target, they will usually absorb many hits with state-of-the-art weapons without sinking, even though the active defenses are turned off. This is several thousand kilograms of explosive with terminal guidance smart enough to find the most vulnerable part of the ship.
Typically, they have to send a specialized demolition team to actually sink the ship after the exercise is over.
To a first approximation, US Navy ships are demonstrably unsinkable. That has always been a hallmark of US Naval architecture, and they are rightly proud of it. The idea that it is possible to destroy these ships with tens of kilos of explosives delivered by cheap drones isn’t serious.