1) one thing that is often overlooked is how hard is to pinpoint the carrier and provide this information to a missile. For a sea-skimming missile horizon is at ~12 miles (20 km); given the distances involved (F-35C has a combat range of about 1k km) and carrier's speed (60 km/h) you will need to provide updates to a missile regarding current carrier's position, which you can't know if you aren't over the horizon for a carrier — in which case you will probably be shot down. This makes the danger of low-cost missile platforms somewhat lower. For a more thorough discussion of the problem see [1]. 2) Drones are unusable against sophisticated opponent. First of all, there will be no datalink: space assets will be denied (either jammed or destroyed), direct radio links will be jammed, too. Therefore the drone will need to orient, fight and decide who to kill autonomously, which is problematic both from technical (e.g. autonomous navigation and decision making) and moral (autonomous killing machine, anyone?) standpoints. Therefore, we can't switch human pilots for drones.
[1]: http://lexingtoninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/aircraft-ca...
The only successful recent use (and that was an AA picket) is Air lanched Argentinians vs the Royal navy and that required some very ballsy pilots and good luck that the target ship was uplinking and did not have its radar on when she was engaged.
And if the RN had had a full CAV in the south atlantic the Super Etendards would have not got to firing range
The supercarrier requires an exponential and compounding set of very expensive investments. The total acquisition cost of a carrier strike group exceeds $25 billion, an air wing another $10 billion and the annual operating costs of perhaps $1 billion.
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"Yet, a cruise missile fired from a wide range of lower signature ships costs less than a third of each bomb delivered by a fighter from the deck of a carrier. Nor do these platforms require a carrier’s defensive shield — and they can launch from beyond the range of carrier-based aircraft.
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A similar shift is occurring now and will displace the modern equivalent of the dashing cavalry officer — the fighter pilot. The knight class never passes willingly — as they take justifiable pride in their acumen and truly believe in their mission. However, the carrier and its air wing cannot be allowed to drive strategy or procurement.
As an outsider, it's hard for me to fully assess these arguments (including from the paragraphs I elided). But they sound rather convincing.