It seems like maybe people are already forgetting the Cold War. Full, symmetric war between nuclear powers must be avoided at all costs. How to prevent escalation to a full intercontinental nuclear exchange is not clear. The Shilling point of not killing each others soldiers on purpose is very clear. Once countries are openly killing each others solders, you are at war, and the situation can change very quickly. This is why Syria is so dangerous and highly underrated as a problem by most people. All the foreign policy reporters and think tanks are distracted by the North Korea situation (not to say that is not a big problem), I would guess.

> The carriers are deterrents, not weapons. They will be among the first major casualties of any true, open warfare.

Any country powerful enough to challenge a US carrier strike group in true, open warfare, isn't a country that is fighting a full symmetric conventional war with the United States. They're fighting a nuclear war.

They are weapons, powerful, effective, government-toppling weapons, and that is what makes them such effective deterrents. For the non-Chinas and non-Russias in the world, a carrier strike group is probably sufficient. If one won't do, how would you like two?

>> Carrier-defeating tech has been out for years Just curious what kind of tech you are referring to?

Assuming there are no capable laser and railgun interceptors deployed and detection/jamming tolerance, probably ASBMs [0].

Or ASMs [1] if carrier air or seaspace is breached, carriers are heavily escorted though.

If nuclear deterrence (god forbid) is broken, then I guess aircraft carriers are pretty much sitting ducks.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ship_ballistic_missile

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ship_missile

Even without nuclear weapons, I've got to think that countermeasures are easily overwhelmed, and the cost of a few dozen long-range anti-carrier missiles must be negligible compared to the advantage of incapacitating a carrier (at least for a top-tier adversary like China or Russia), right?

I'm not sure. Throwing a few dozen missiles from long range against a carrier group, complete with airplanes, may not work very well. They'll have a few dozen fighters, multiple Phalanx guns, shipboard missiles, and a lot of electronic counter-attacks. I think they will only be "easily" overwhelmed if they've got an attack method that is hard for the carrier group to counterattack. That is harder than it looks.

I have no idea and I hope you're right, but airplanes and missiles aren't implicitly anti ballistic countermeasures. Certainly there are some anti ballistic missiles and fighters which are equipped with anti-ballistic tech, but I don't have any idea how effective they'd be in a barrage scenario.

> The carriers are deterrents, not weapons.

If its not a weapon, it can't work as a deterrent, either.

The carriers are only "not being attacked" because they are backed by a fuck-ton of nuclear weapons. MAD, 101.