Carriers take weeks to get anywhere, (and can’t do so stealthily) unlike aircraft, which launched stateside or from our overseas bases, and refueled on the way can get anywhere in the world in just a few hours.
The vast majority of ordinance dropped in Iraq and the Gulf war was from land-based aircraft. Why? One cannot launch bombers of any size (or planes with 2000 lb. bombs) from carriers. Real airpower is still done through bombers, supported by fighters and tankers; serious air warfare needs land based aircraft, period. Carriers also are enormous sitting ducks—no matter how huge the fleet protecting them.
I really think with modern precision weapons—the era of the carrier, like that of the battleship, is passed. Just a few strategically placed aircraft bases are far more secure—and even less expensive—not to mention more effective.
No, and I say that as a hardcore strategic airpower advocate and former SAC crew chief. Fixed bases are vulnerable just in the fact that they are fixed. There were planners who expected our bases in West Germany to be toast under a shower of short range missiles with conventional warheads in the first hours of WWIII in Europe. The same thing could happen to any land bases outside the American homeland. Good missile defense can cure this, but then, the same technology could protect the carriers just as well, and you have to find the carrier first.