It's the same thing, if you think of aircraft as missiles. The point is the extension of range. Aircraft can reach out much, much further than a naval gun, and can be used to scout more effectively (many 20th century battleships had aircraft of their own for scouting/fire spotting). Even modern missile-equipped warships are less flexible in some ways than a carrier air wing, though we have yet to see warfare pitting a modern carrier battle group against anti-ship missiles.

And now advanced self-targeting hypersonic intercontinental ballistic missiles are going to soon usurp carriers. Just a few dozen launched from land will easily overwhelm any defense a carrier has.

You know how everything in our lives is slowly becoming smart? This goes for all the weapons too.

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

Surprisingly enough, the AEGIS Anti Ballistic Missile variant is in fact designed to intercept the name on the tin. That a handful of lazy journalists write "carriers are dead" articles with some regularity doesn't mean the actual Pentagon is clueless and asleep at the wheel vs it being a superficial take of a much more complex topic.

A couple years back the Navy asked congress for funding to demonstrate taking down an inbound saturation attack of 500+ missiles, probably as a deterrent to China. Congress declined.

> Surprisingly enough, the AEGIS Anti Ballistic Missile variant is in fact designed to intercept the name on the tin.

When people say "hypersonic missiles" they mean missiles with a hypersonic glide phase, which have non-ballistic flight paths and can't generally be intercepted by anti-ballistic-missile countermeasures.

This made me chuckle. Not that it's impossible but that is quite hand wavey for a very tough technical challenge nobody is close to accomplishing yet.

Sure. And carriers can simply launch their reusable hypersonic smart drone swarm shields and submerge underwater.

> And carriers can ... submerge underwater.

Not sure if you were serious or not, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine

A carrier costs $10 billion. Without considering the crew and stuff in it. You can fire 50 $100 mil missiles simultaneously at it would still make a lot of sense, especially considering the morale aspect.

Regardless of missile cost, the hard part is getting an accurate targeting track and then data linking that back to a launcher. Satellites, aircraft, and submarines can all potentially accomplish that mission, but they only exist in limited numbers and are in turn vulnerable to the defensive weapons available in a carrier strike force.

You only need general location data. The missile can do the final approach itself.

It's hard to hide a strike group. Even civilians are tracking them these days with commercial sattelites:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2020/05/07/the-realiti...

US itself talks about sending out hundreds of cheapish drones in a swarm (5 km spacing) to seek out all naval assets over an area.

Bullshit. The missiles have only limited sensors and maneuvering capability. Commercial satellites don't provide real-time targeting data. And cheap drones lack the range for this mission. You obviously have no clue what you're talking about

> A carrier costs $10 billion. Without considering the crew and stuff in it. You can fire 50 $100 mil missiles simultaneously at it would still make a lot of sense, especially considering the morale aspect.

It would make sense for equal economies fighting.

Is there actually an independently confirmed useful hypersonic weapon?

Aircraft aren't anything without their missiles.

This sea change happened in WWII though.

Recon is very valuable. Cannons are far more effective if you know where to point them.