During World War Two, approximately two-thirds of Japanese fleet carrier losses were caused by air attack (with many then scuttled by Japanese forces), while the remaining Japanese carriers and 3 of 4 Royal Navy carriers were lost to submarine attack, establishing air attack and submarine attack as the two primary carrier-killing methods.

Aircraft carriers provide multiple distinct military functions simultaneously: they increase fleet awareness through reconnaissance, provide air defense for the strike group, enable long-range offensive power projection, and serve as force multipliers that increase the combat capability of supporting surface and subsurface units.

A full-sized fleet aircraft carrier costs approximately the entire GDP of Madagascar (about 5.5 billion US dollars) just to construct, and this enormous cost shapes not just what the carrier is but who the carrier is for: exclusively great powers interested in power projection rather than smaller nations or those interested primarily in self-defense.

Aircraft carriers have been critical to American power projection for nearly a century, with US Presidents in times of crisis historically asking 'Where are the carriers?' as the first question about military response options.

At the start of World War Two, many nations' navies had more battleships than carriers, but by 1945 the US had 28 fleet carriers, 71 light and escort carriers, supported by only 23 battleships, demonstrating a fundamental shift in naval power projection dominated by aircraft.

Nuclear-powered carriers require refueling intervals of 20-25 years and offer more endurance and horsepower per displacement, while conventional carriers are cheaper upfront but require frequent fuel resupply (roughly monthly at efficient cruising speed) and impose logistical constraints on operations.

Catapult-assisted aircraft launch systems are expensive and complex but enable carriers to operate a wider array of aircraft types with larger payloads in energy-efficient manner, while short take-off and vertical-landing designs limit operators to high thrust-to-weight ratio aircraft like fighters with payload restrictions.

The Gerald R. Ford-class carrier was originally scheduled to begin full deployment in 2017 but was delayed until May 2023 primarily because the ship's 11 advanced weapon elevators were not functional at commissioning, with only 2 of 11 certified operational by early 2019 and certification not completed until 2021, demonstrating risk in fielding new ship classes.

US carrier construction costs increased dramatically from 1955 to 2017, with the original Nimitz-class at 80,000 tons costing approximately 1 billion dollars in 1975 (equivalent to 5-6 billion in 2023 dollars), while the Gerald R. Ford at 100,000 tons cost just over 13 billion—a 25% increase in displacement but more than doubling in price, driven by increased displacements, new technology integration, and inflation.

Authorizing multiple carriers in advance (block-buy) allows significant cost savings through shipyard planning and supply chain optimization, as demonstrated by US authorization of USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller in 2019, which cut approximately 247 million dollars off Enterprise's cost and 2.64 billion off Doris Miller's cost compared to single-ship procurement.

France operates only one nuclear-powered carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, which at 42,000 tons is about half the displacement of the Ford-class, enabling only about half the air wing, and limiting strategic flexibility because any crisis must occur when the single ship is available, making carrier deployment a major strategic decision.

China acquired an old Soviet Kuznetsov-class carrier hull as an apparent floating casino in 1998 for 20 million dollars, underwent complex international negotiations to transit the Dardanelles, lost its tow in a storm costing a sailor's life, circumnavigated Africa rather than using Suez Canal, and rebuilt it into the Liaoning to gain carrier operating experience, demonstrating both how nations acquire carrier capability and the complications of the process.

China's third carrier Fujian is expected to be the largest non-American carrier in service and will be equipped with electromagnetic catapults, representing a design much closer to American supercarriers than anything Russia or the Soviet Union produced, indicating significant technological progress in Chinese carrier design.

Anti-ship ballistic missiles like China's DF-21 represent a significant potential threat because they can engage targets hundreds or thousands of kilometers away in minutes while moving at speeds during terminal descent that pose massive problems for most missile defense systems, but their actual capability against defended moving targets remains unproven, unlike the 1921 Billy Mitchell battleship test which was against an uncrewed, stationary, undefended target.

Deterrence and signaling are major carrier functions where the presence of carriers (particularly multiple carriers) signals resolve and capability to potential opponents, making them reconsider aggressive actions, while absence of carriers can shape events negatively—as with 1969 North Korea incident where lack of carrier presence in theater prevented US military response.

Carriers enable alliance-building because nations with valuable military capabilities like naval air power projection become more attractive as allies, and the ability to selectively project naval air power over long distances is a strategically valuable capability that makes allied nations more willing to align with carrier-operating states.

Center for Strategic and International Studies war games of USA/China 2026 conflict scenarios typically showed US forward-deployed carriers lost within the first week of engagements, but the US team usually won the overall war game, suggesting anti-carrier systems make carriers vulnerable in peer conflict but don't alone determine war outcomes.

Because system obsolescence requires not just vulnerability but that job-specific alternatives exist that do the job better, and because viable full replacements for carrier functions don't currently exist (ground-based aviation lacks mobility, missiles lack flexibility for non-combat missions, etc.), vulnerable systems don't necessarily become obsolete.

Carrier threats from anti-ship ballistic missiles, hypersonics, and submarines are primarily relevant in all-out peer-on-peer conventional conflicts, whereas French or British carriers deploying to Africa face much lower threat levels, meaning carrier vulnerability is scenario-dependent rather than universally true.

In peer conflict scenarios involving capable opponents with anti-carrier weaponry, investing in 4-5 nuclear attack submarines might generate more military utility per dollar than investing in an additional carrier, as war games show submarine forces 'absolutely went to town sinking opposing ships' even when carriers were considered challenging threats.