If we're talking nukes maybe (although if we're talking nukes carriers are largely irrelevant and nuclear missile subs become the primary threat), but once agai

If we're talking nukes maybe (although if we're talking nukes carriers are largely irrelevant and nuclear missile subs become the primary threat), but once again the ocean is big. However huge the ship is, your search space is far larger. Even getting a siting from orbit could potentially be disrupted by weather. In the case of the pacific ocean you're literally looking for a moving football field in ~60 million square miles of ocean. Carriers in wartime wouldn't be sailing in straight lines over long distances either. National interest had a good line about it: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-its-really-hard-sink-aircraft-carrier-99487 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-its-really-hard-s... "And because carriers are constantly moving when deployed at up to 35 miles per hour -- fast enough to outrun submarines -- finding and tracking them is difficult. Within 30 minutes after a sighting by enemies, the area within which a carrier might be operating has grown to 700 square miles; after 90 minutes, it has expanded to 6,000 square miles." Binkov on YouTube did a good analysis of the threats modern carriers face as of last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui8sBMA3VGM&t=205s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui8sBMA3VGM&t=205s TLDR there are some technologies likely to show up in a decade or so that may make carriers harder to use, but would hardly render them obsolete. As for conventional missiles, Binkov also did a good analysis on how many missiles it would theoretically take to take out a single AEGIS equipped destroyer. Carrier battle groups would have multiple such destroyers in addition to their own missile defense and those of other accompanying ships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwDfaY4OW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwDfaY4OW4