I suspect if these hypersonic ballistic ship killer missiles are more widely available in 20 years, countermeasures will also exist by then.
The First Gulf War is pretty much a symmetrical war in tactics and strategy, even if one side roflstomped the other. Arguably the Russia-Georgia and more recent Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts would also qualify quite well.
Ruling out technology (and the 35v1 nature of the conflict) seems a little silly.
This is like claiming I'm evenly matched with Dwayne Johnson in a fight because we're of fairly similar heights.
The First Gulf War was fought as a tank, air, and infantry warfare model, much akin to World War II-style tactics. And actually, the numbers were a lot closer than you might expect; the Gulf Coalition was made up of ~1 million men (the majority of them US), with Iraq having about ~600-700k defenders arrayed against them. Actually, it was remarked at the time that it seemed a risky strategy, since conventional military theory generally has you wanting about a 2-3× manpower advantage to be able to overcome a defending force.
The Iraqis were arguably not particularly inferior in terms of technology--they were a petrostate after all, and able to buy the fancy modern weapons on offer from both sides of the Cold War ideological divide. However, their organizational capabilities were decidedly inferior. It's not entirely clear to me why their anti-air capabilities were completely ineffective, but the US was able to achieve total air superiority and it used this decisive advantage to completely eviscerate Iraqi command-and-control. In the actual field, the losses that the Iraqis sustained quickly turned to utter routs.
It seems rash to bet the farm on that not happening with something that can take out an aircraft carrier given that the tech already exists.
Large military assets like carriers are safe against other super powers simply because any conflict that would involve their loss is going to be so costly on all other fronts as to make the point moot. So while Russia and China could sink one with effort the cost long term are their best defense, simply put the economic trade issues if a conflict comes up out weighs everything else.
US wise, the military branches have always had a pissing match going on. The Navy with its carriers and the air force with its manned bombers. Both technologies are either obsolete or nearing it with the advent of smarter drones; both flying and water borne; let alone combined with new artillery like rail guns and hypersonic missiles.
However that pissing match is saved by both parties in Congress who use the funding to keep political power. The US could keep its peace at half the military it has and the Chiefs of Staff know it. Congress would not even let the military close bases it clearly did not need. Congress regularly has the military buy weapons it doesn't want.
So combine the internal political power Congress wields with a large military establishment with one up man ship attitude between the Air Force and Navy and we are stuck with a very expensive relic of days gone past.
I am not sure how much turn over is required in Congress to pare down the military. Don't get me wrong, you may seem claims they have or will cut the budget but remember the US Congress considers increases automatic and reducing the increase while still increasing constitutes a cut.
& I would expect many non equivalent adversaries to be able to catch up by 2038, rendering these things sitting ducks even when being used for force projection against people in caves.