I was under the impression that nuclear ballistic missiles had reentry warheads that split up and could steer themselves to separate places before detonating. Can't a warhead be controlled to hit something as large as a carrier? Like a smart bomb? Or couldn't a ballistic missile deliver a second missile that can detect something as large and metallic as a carrier?
Wrong. They still follow a "Ballistic Path". In other words, are completely unpowered, and in "freefall" based upon the ballistics used when they are launched.
Just like with my description of the baseball. The individual warheads of a MIRV are not "controlled" either, think of it like you tie 5 darts together, with a string that can be pulled to release them when it starts the downward fall. Exact same thing, precision is not even needed when discussing nukes.
And now I am going to go into some more details I have many times already. When discussing ballistic missiles, one thing of critical importance when you discuss them is the CEP, or "Circular Error Probable". This is really the actual accuracy of the individual missile itself. And in short, if you make a series of circles on the ground and lob 20 ballistic missiles at it, the tightest grouping where over 50% fall within a diameter circle, that is the CEP. And when talking about ballistic missiles, that is of critical importance.
Now, the CEP of the DF-21 class missiles (which is what the DF-21D is) is estimated to be between 50 and 100 meters. THat means if you launch 20 of them at a ground target, half of them will land inside a circle 50 meters across. With me so far? In other words, half will be inside the circle, and half will be outside the circle.
Now the flight deck of a Nimitz class carrier is 333 by 77 meters. That means that even if the missile launch and everything else goes absolutely perfectly, it still has to hit a target where one of the dimensions is barely larger than the CEP of the missile itself.
And this has only been talking about just the absolute basics of only the missile itself. There is no such thing as a "steerable ballistic warhead", they simply do not work that way. Everything is determined from the moment they are launched in the ballistic capabilities at that time. Then we would have to go into other things, like how they could possibly acquire and track a moving target over the horizon. Once again, goes right back to my analogy of throwing a baseball at a moving target on the other side of a fence.
And no, "Smart Bombs" are not quite what you think they are. They have to have somebody controlling them. Most times they are actually following a LASER designator, either projected on the target by somebody on the ground, or by the attacking aircraft itself. The "bomb" or missile itself is really quite stupid, think of it as a kamikaze moth that only knows to follow the light.
All missiles used for decades against things like this are flat trajectory missiles. And they are perfect, because they only have to really worry about two dimensions. Literally point and shoot, they are either aimed and fired at a selected target, or put into a "homing mode" and will lock onto the first target that matches the specifications programmed into it. But all they need is direction, and how high to fly over the surface. The actual distance to the target itself does not even matter, so long as it has the fuel to reach it. That can be off by a dozen miles, it will still keep going until it intersects it. Ship moves 6 kilometers between launching and the missile finding it? No problem, tiny correction in heading and it is aiming right at it again.
With a ballistic missile, the placement must be absolutely perfect. On a moving target.