Admittedly, I have no special expertise. My understanding is that while for certain kinds of force projection, they are the only game in town, they are such a

Admittedly, I have no special expertise. My understanding is that while for certain kinds of force projection, they are the only game in town, they are such a rich, fat target, a larger and larger portion of their operation (in terms of manpower, arms and electronics) gets devoted to defending the carrier, and this squeezes out the force projection capability. I believe the cost of production of an aircraft carrier is around $12 billion, and I'm not sure if that includes the ~$1 billion worth of aircraft on board.