This is the salient point every time one of these articles comes out. Q: When was the last time a CVN was sunk in combat? A: Never. With their escorts and CAP getting through the defenses could take most of an adversary's military, if you can find the CVBG in the first place. Even then, you'll need a lot of hits to take one out. My money is on carriers until at least 2030 with a mix of F-35s and large UCAVs as the air wing.
The closest we’ve come to losing a supercarrier from damage was the Forrestal during her 67 fire and Enterprise during her 69 one.
Both ships too damage equivilant to multiple large missile hits. And could have, in a real world combat situation, been back and operational with temporary repairs in a short amount of shipyard time.
The only thing out there that has a shot of taking out a carrier is a nuke. Pretty much a direct hit with a nuke, as bikini showed (even extrapolating up for bombs with much larger yields)
Popping off a nuke at a carrier, whether it sinks the carrier or not, Issa whole different ballgame. Chances are someone will quickly lose a major population center ...
Most people think because a CVN looks huge next to the pier it’s easy to find at sea. The first part of anybody’s ‘kill chain’ starts with ‘Find’ and includes track and identify. That’s not easy when the ‘target’ can be anywhere within 2 million square miles of ocean in 24 hours.