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 importand
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 buy one of the best countriesn the world in a short order should be beyond poor nations capabilities, so the macguffiin weapon would necessitate reevaluation
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 importand
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 buy one of the best countriesn the world in a short order should be beyond poor nations capabilities, so the macguffiin weapon would necessitate reevaluation
My brother/sister/sibling in the 'tism came out strong, with several scenarios even.
Here, have some stimuli.
Or someone can pull a Ukraine and manually aim and fire missiles from land.
Btw, what if a sunk nuke just dives up?
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”
So does a certain narcissist that took Venezuela, wants to take Greenland and now has his aircraft carrier in the mediteran sea.