Carriers might not be worth as much as they once were, much like the obsoletion of battleships.

The millennium challenge 2002 was a large war game conducted by the USA, and was intended to test and demonstrate the effectiveness of USA (blue)'s high-tech warfare against a moderately-sized Iran-like (red) lower-tech opponent.

Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications. The Naval Simulation, Joint Semi-Automated Forces (JSAF) had neither a sophisticated electronic network nor the modeling of WWII lights at the time of MC-02 according to the developer of the JSAF simulation; Mr. Guy Purser, Director, Modeling and Simulation, NWDC.

Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. At approximately the same time that Red had located Blue forces, operators of the Blue naval simulation were directed incorrectly to turn off all self-defense capabilities by a senior Naval Officer who was not in command of the simulated forces nor current in the scenario. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that destroyed sixteen warships while the JSAF simulator operators sat and watched without responding defensively or offensively. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected. Again it should be noted, the JSAF simulation did not at that time have the suicide behaviors modeled nor the damage models of interactions of a small boat impacting a ship.