Its all about surveillance. Given modern technology of all sorts, once a ship is located, it can be sunk in a variety of ways. Sorry Navy, but the era of big capital surface ships is over, Simply not ethical to deploy five thousand young sailors on a big carrier in an operational area against a technologically capable opponent.
The future of warfare is swarm bots and it scares the crap out of me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1t4M2XnIhI
“Sorry Navy, but the era of big capital surface ships is over...]
You sink any of our carriers, you just signed your own death certificate.
Obama’s reaction aside.
I do not see surface vessels as the primary weapons platform which needs to be tactically rethought if railguns become feasible to deploy significantly.
The big change would be in the vulnerability of aircraft.
Line of sight weapons are no threat to a CVBG.
I still think the Naval future is nuclear powered drone subs outfitted with launchable flying drones (either fire and forget or recoverable), cruise missles, and maybe one of these rail guns.
Someone at Norad periodically activates it to ensure all systems are go and operates the whole sub remotely and then additional crew is added to operate the additional launched drones.