Cruise missiles that aren't supersonic aren't of much use. As long as they're in the air, they're targets.

The author painted a very gloomy picture for the carrier. But it isn't all one-sided. In a wartime situation, the carrier would have a much deeper defense. Several hundred miles or more. The E-2 EAWS aircraft easily provide coverage over a 500 mile bubble. Paired with other maritime surveillance aircraft and satellite imagery, they'd have a handle on the nearest aggressors and plan accordingly. Even supersonic missiles need time to travel 2-300 miles.

You know the funny thing? When I was in, the idea was that we'd get off that one big Alpha strike. After that, well.. No one expected to be around long enough to ever recover aircraft if it came down to cases, and the aircraft probably wouldn't be coming back anyway.

War sucks, people die. But the side with better weapons loses fewer people and the best probable chance of surviving. No sane person wants a war, especially the military. That's the sole purview of insane politicians.

Sure, the CVNs are big and their expensive. No argument. But they also have better manning and logistics requirements when compared to multiple smaller decks. Most people fail to realize that the avionics systems in those planes require dedicated test systems that in themselves costs many millions of dollars each and require very, very, well trained technicians to maintain and repair them. That is in addition to the technicians who actually repair the avionics systems.

Then there are the jet's engines. They also require a substantial capital expense for the maintenance systems.

Everything that is found on a big deck is also required on a smaller deck. And you don't get much of a break, either. If a big deck needs four expensive avionics test systems, then the smaller carrier may only need two. In some cases, there might only be on of a particular test bench on the CVN. But that one needs to exist on each smaller carrier. By the time you have three smaller carriers, the capital costs are already higher than for a CVN.

Don't get me started on trained personnel. The shop supplies the basic cadre for the intermediate maintenance shops and each squadron kicks in some technicians to support their systems. Those shops ran two 12 hours shifts (someone jump in if this has changed). Want to take a guess at many more maintenance people it would take to man three smaller ships vs one larger ship?

Aircraft maintenance is more than poking around with a multimeter, swapping tubes to get the radios working, or swapping out a cylinder on a recip engine. Systems are more computerized and require intelligent people to operate them.

You can't stuff 40-50 aircraft onto something with a cat and arresting gear without also providing all of the very expensive ancillary repair systems to support them.

The days of the jeep carrier are long gone.