Battleships Were the Most Powerful Weapon of War Ever Created (Until This Happened)

MAJ (Join to see) - Perhaps but I think back to the skepticism that cheap planes could ever take down a battleship and it was all nonsense. Well that is until it started happening.

To take out a carrier you either need a nuke, or a anti ship missile, which require significant communications relays in order guide the missile to it's target. Over the horizon missiles or Stealth Aircraft are the only effective tools to do so, that leaves subs as the only effective anti-carrier unit. (now if carriers get into range of land based aircraft that's a game over for the carrier.) Carriers will continue to function as mobile projection platforms for the mop up operations for many years to come.

I think the concept of "Carriers" will be around for a long time, but the big ones may not necessarily carry aircraft.

Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen - Agreed. It's always going to be difficult to see the future in these things. I think there is a lot of that in relation to carriers. That is to say we usually don't understand the implications of new technologies until the next major war with an opponent that is actually a technological match for us. We haven't faced that in a very long time but I think that is coming to an end.

Carriers don't have to be sunk for them to become obsolete. We currently have drone operators remotely piloting aircraft halfway around the world and those aircraft can sit there a loiter for long periods of time. Things like that start to dig into the usefulness of such a large and expensive platform. In the future will it be that all we need is a tender for remotely piloted aircraft that? That's the kind of thing that can kill our modern concept of a carrier.