Without reading an article, but I will assume you mean a magical macguffin weapon just…sinks it and no one knows what happened. The response depends on a few things.
Without its strike group
Threat assessment will show its defenses were overwelmed by the macguffin weapon. Maybe even conventional missiles - these things aren’t invincible.
With Strike Group
The normal Carrier travels with 12-15 destroyers and other auxiliary vessels to provide screening and defense overlapping. If the carrier is struck and damaged/sunk in the center or back of this strike group, without loss of other vessels, an immediate retreat and Threat assessment will be done to see how the macguffin weapon got past everything else. This would be the concern - again Carriers aren’t invincible, but how your macguffin got past so much radar would be important and the MAIN focus, if the macguffin did not do it in an immediately obvious way.
Strike Group disabled/sunk
If the entire strike group is damaged/sunk, the entire fleet will pull back to begin assessing risk of the macguffin. Damaging a fair number of ships run by the United States in a short order should be beyond poor nations capabilities, so the macguffiin weapon would necessitate reevaluation. Delay of at least a week to assess where/what the macguffin weapon is, (Assuming its a singular object) and then if the target, say Iran, is able to be struck within a specific loss ratio of troops.
A macguffin weapon like a Deathstar type where it can fire at single target position would give most Threat analysis away and the immediate questions to answer would be 1. How much energy/fuel/ammunition does it cost to fire. (If a broke country can afford a mega laser - how don’t I have one?) 2. How does it target (radar can be blocked, is it manually aimed as direct fire/ parabolic like artillery) 3. How can it be avoided (like blocking radar to aim, or like can a physical obstruction block the firing angle. 4. Can it be destroyed (is it susceptible to a strike team on land to sabotage?) 5 Is there more than one.
I wrote my comment in the assumption that there is no immediately obvious cause of damage.
The assumption a carrier- with more bulkheads/damage control teams/position at the heart of a formation suddenly taking critical damage and/or sinking without any warning of incoming enemy planes/missiles would generate the exact amount of panic it sounds like it should. I suppose I kind of missed that in the original comment.
A nuclear device detonating underneath would generate a great amount of concern from the international community, especially if Iran immediately says “yo that wasn’t us”
Without reading an article, but I will assume you mean a magical macguffin weapon just…sinks it and no one knows what happened. The response depends on a few things.
Without its strike group
Threat assessment will show its defenses were overwelmed by the macguffin weapon. Maybe even conventional missiles - these things aren’t invincible.
With Strike Group
The normal Carrier travels with 12-15 destroyers and other auxiliary vessels to provide screening and defense overlapping. If the carrier is struck and damaged/sunk in the center or back of this strike group, without loss of other vessels, an immediate retreat and Threat assessment will be done to see how the macguffin weapon got past everything else. This would be the concern - again Carriers aren’t invincible, but how your macguffin got past so much radar would be important and the MAIN focus, if the macguffin did not do it in an immediately obvious way.
Strike Group disabled/sunk
If the entire strike group is damaged/sunk, the entire fleet will pull back to begin assessing risk of the macguffin. Damaging a fair number of ships run by the United States in a short order should be beyond poor nations capabilities, so the macguffiin weapon would necessitate reevaluation. Delay of at least a week to assess where/what the macguffin weapon is, (Assuming its a singular object) and then if the target, say Iran, is able to be struck within a specific loss ratio of troops.
A macguffin weapon like a Deathstar type where it can fire at single target position would give most Threat analysis away and the immediate questions to answer would be 1. How much energy/fuel/ammunition does it cost to fire. (If a broke country can afford a mega laser - how don’t I have one?) 2. How does it target (radar can be blocked, is it manually aimed as direct fire/ parabolic like artillery) 3. How can it be avoided (like blocking radar to aim, or like can a physical obstruction block the firing angle. 4. Can it be destroyed (is it susceptible to a strike team on land to sabotage?) 5 Is there more than one.
Btw, what if a sunk nuke just dives up and goes off?
I wrote my comment in the assumption that there is no immediately obvious cause of damage.
The assumption a carrier- with more bulkheads/damage control teams/position at the heart of a formation suddenly taking critical damage and/or sinking without any warning of incoming enemy planes/missiles would generate the exact amount of panic it sounds like it should. I suppose I kind of missed that in the original comment.
A nuclear device detonating underneath would generate a great amount of concern from the international community, especially if Iran immediately says “yo that wasn’t us”
Or someone can pull a Ukraine and manually aim and fire missiles from land.
My brother/sister/sibling in the 'tism came out strong, with several scenarios even.
Here, have some stimuli.