Just wanted to point out, no one in their right mind should/would try to use a hypersonic missile for a "short-range" attack.
The missile needs time to maneuver onto a vector to the target, and to accelerate. Once accelerated, it's not going to be drastically changing it's trajectory on anything resembling a "short" timescale, seeing as hypersonic turning radii are measured in miles. Rocket accelerated gliders this goes for doubly to avoid overshot.
It just isn't a practical utilization of the delivery vehicle.
Furthermore, the point of carrier's is air superiority, and force projection. That carrier is a mobile slab of sovereign soil from which all sorts of logistics can be dispatched from.
It's the difference between "I could get bombed today," and pointing at the spec floating on the horizon, and saying "There's where the bomb that would get dropped on me today is," if that makes any sense.
Is that really relevant, though? The point is, Iran can close the Strait anytime it wants. It can easily kill tankers, and there is approximately nothing we can do about it. Carriers don't change that, any more than a tank changes a hostage crisis.
And it's not like we don't have plenty of friendly airbases in easy striking distance, either - in Iraq, Kuwait, Israel, etc. Putting American military response into Iran within minutes of an incident is trivial. What's hard is doing it in a way that completely prevents Iran from closing the Strait. When they have hundreds, maybe thousands of weapons capable of sinking a tanker, hidden all over that coast? They could shut down the Strait for months, even if we applied maximum force.
Again, this is a hostage situation, with 25% of the world's oil (40% of the oil that is shipped internationally) as the hostage.
As an engineer, I think it'd be pretty easy for me to hit a tanker- just bring the missile in low, at an acute angle to the convoy (relatively thick broken line) and you're likely to hit one of them at least.
The missile needs time to maneuver onto a vector to the target, and to accelerate. Once accelerated, it's not going to be drastically changing it's trajectory on anything resembling a "short" timescale, seeing as hypersonic turning radii are measured in miles. Rocket accelerated gliders this goes for doubly to avoid overshot.
It just isn't a practical utilization of the delivery vehicle.
Furthermore, the point of carrier's is air superiority, and force projection. That carrier is a mobile slab of sovereign soil from which all sorts of logistics can be dispatched from.
It's the difference between "I could get bombed today," and pointing at the spec floating on the horizon, and saying "There's where the bomb that would get dropped on me today is," if that makes any sense.