Current drones, certainly.But no reason that drones could not be developed to fulfil that role, free of the constraints of having a cockpit and pilot on board.
With an aircraft / drone free of those restrictions it is entirely possible that smaller ships could project the same force as current aircraft carriers.
And do you intend to land these drones once they have spent their munitions?
Would you fly them back to the nearest friendly base or the ship from which they came?
If from the ship from which they came, then you're realistically looking at a hull the size of the old Hermes.
If back to the nearest friendly base, then we could be talking a day between sorties.
Either way, the carrier currently wins top trumps!
Water landing.
Similar technology is already in development.
Russia's amphibious UAV almost in production
And this shows how they are beginning to develop the capability to launch drones from small ships.
Darpa looks to use small ships as drone bases - BBC News
If there is an airfield nearby then great. It's always preferable to using a carrier. Again look at the Falklands. It took a lot of inflight refueling to get one bomber to the Islands. What if your inflight refueling aircraft developed a problem? Aircraft do. It happened on the Black Buck missions.
With Libya there was inflight refueling to get Tornado's there. They carried a bigger weapon load than a Harrier. The problem was reacting. You are on the ground and you see a tank you want destroying. A Harrier from a Carrier just off the coast of Libya could have been there quickly and dropped a bomb on it. Getting a Tornado there meant a long delay and a long flight. For targets of opportunity it helps if you have something close that can react. Strike fast, strike sure as you say.
You are going about the thinking the wrong way. What if for the Falkland's instead of a couple of small carriers with some Harriers we'd had a big one?
Ask why are so many countries either owning carriers or building them?
Something else people are forgetting. It's not just for fixed wing aircraft. What if you want to land troops? A carrier is a big lump of real estate you can fill with whatever you want. You can stick drones in it. You can stick helicopters on it. Either troop carrying or gunships or ASW. You can stick aircraft on it. The aircraft can shoot down other aircraft or drop bombs on them. And there's very few navies capable of taking them on.
They are also useful for other things. Disaster relief is often their role.
The Navy has been using small drones off "small" ships - frigates - for ages. Google Scan Eagle if you want to know more. But these are small, surveillance aircraft not much larger than a model aircraft. If you want drones that do things that fighter jets do - or want multiple heavy lift helicopters to shift people and cargo - you need bigger ships. It is not only the size of the aircraft themselves - and physics rather dictates an airframe size if you want certain all up weight - it is all the supporting infrastructure required, i.e. fuel. filters, stores, ammunition, heavy duty RAS equipment and so forth.
It is envisaged that as we will have the carriers for the next fifty years at some point they will probably be launching drones.
US drone makes first aircraft carrier landing - BBC News
Something like Taranis would be good.
Found it.
HMS Queen Elizabeth: supercarrier will be source of inspiration and pride, says Queen
Once built, the ship will be in service for 50 years. Sir George predicted that as technology developed, its aircraft would increasingly be remotely-piloted drones.
He said: “This is a piece of UK sovereign territory that the Government and our imagination can work with.”
As technology marches on it's still a big piece of real estate you can send anywhere and equip with anything.
Indeed.But as per my original post I also expect drones may develop to the point that they can be launched from much smaller ships and still have the capabilities of current manned aircraft.
They certainly aren't there yet, but it isn't a huge stretch to see that drones could eliminate the need for manned planes and the very large aircraft carriers required to put enough of them into where they are needed.
The aircraft carrier is king and will remain so for a while.But the combination of railguns & other new weapons along with the development of drones is likely to reduce their importance in their current configurations.Why have a multi-billion pound target with all your eggs in one basket if you could get similar firepower from smaller and cheaper ships?