Our Aircraft Carriers Are Expensive, Defenseless Sitting Ducks

This article is the latest in the same vein - that carrior groups are mainly for show, and the military knows it.
Oh sure, they can sit off the coast of a small country and fly sortes in and out while they bomb the shit out of a defenseless population that can't strike back. They can steam around and impress the gullible and can be used for douchbag photo ops, but every day that goes by they become more obsolete. Technology has long since passed them by and is increasingly available to anybody with a few bucks.
It's a deadly scam and is probably the reason why Iran was never attacked. There may have been a lot of pouty faces at the thought of suicide missions.

"I've been saying for a long time that aircraft carriers are just history's most expensive floating targets and that they were doomed.
But now I can tell you exactly how they're going to die. I've just read one of the most shocking stories in years. It comes from the U.S. Naval Institute, not exactly an alarmist or anti-Navy source. And what it says is that the U.S. carrier group is scrap metal.
The Chinese military has developed a ballistic missile, Dong Feng 21, specifically designed to kill U.S. aircraft carriers:
"Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at Mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2,000 kilometers in less than 12 minutes."
That's the U.S. Naval Institute talking, remember. They're understating the case when they say that, with speed, satellite guidance and maneuverability like that, "the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased."
You know why that's an understatement? Because of a short little sentence I found further on in the article -- and before you read that sentence, I want all you trusting Pentagon groupies to promise me that you'll think hard about what it implies. Here's the sentence: "Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack."

This has been known for decades but still they built the fleets. That article goes on to talk about Chinese weapons, but the Russians have been busy developing navy busters for far longer. There's one missile thats probably all over the middle east by now, the extremely powerful Moskit, or Sunburn:

"The Sunburn can deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear payload, or: a 750-pound conventional warhead, within a range of 100 miles, more than twice the range of the Exocet. The Sunburn combines a Mach 2.1 speed (two times the speed of sound) with a flight pattern that hugs the deck and includes “violent end maneuvers” to elude enemy defenses. The missile was specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis radar defense system."

"The Sunburn’s combined supersonic speed and payload size produce tremendous kinetic energy on impact, with devastating consequences for ship and crew. A single one of these missiles can sink a large warship, yet costs considerably less than a fighter jet. Although the Navy has been phasing out the older Phalanx defense system, its replacement, known as the Rolling Action Missile (RAM) has never been tested against the weapon it seems destined to one day face in combat."

But pay no attention to the fact that surface ships are now giant floating coffins and the military clearly realizes it. In FY 2010 alone the Obama administration is planning to build four of the largest, most modern, most expensive and the most vulnerable battleships in the world.