Do the Iranians have to win against a Navy ship or an oil tanker? Asymmetric warfare suggests they would ignore the well fortified ship and wreak havoc on commercial shipping to get the same result. The Strait of Hormuz is so shallow and narrow that they only really need to sink two or three tankers to shut the whole thing down.

That isn't really true. There are expensive and important bits on the outside-- radars, optical sensors, etc. that could be damaged by very small things.

Even $400 dollar drones would force some kind of defensive system to start shooting if the ship is to remain usable.

The ship would of course also become progressively more vulnerable as this goes on, so I don't agree that ships have some kind of D&D-style DR that means that anything costing below a million does nothing.

These boat drones ukraine used to sink some russian ships seem to be very hard to avoid.

> An aerial drone capable of materially damaging a modern navy ship costs $1-2M a piece. Anything much cheaper doesn't have the range, survivability, or required warhead to do much more than scratch the paint.

Problem isn't a single drone, it's the cost of intercepters. Iran could launch a swarm of 100s of drones with few antiship missiles mixed in to hone in at same time. CSG has to spend $million+ interceptors and will quickly run out of them. US hasn't taken anti drone defence seriously, or the cost of doing it seriously before going in.

Fly thousands or tens of thousands of $400 drones at the carrier, Chinese light show style, while the carrier uses up all its anti-drone Defense ammunition.

Then fly in the high explosives.

> It isn't like they have no experience with the concept and those drones are far more capable than anything Iran has.

Unless Iran bought some CM-302 missiles from China, the mere threat of which appears to mean that China and Iran now control the oil in the gulf.

But ELI5 me maybe I don't understand realpolitik