Carriers are going to become more and more obsolete going forward as anti-ship missile technology continues to improve. Missiles will always be cheaper and have more range than a carrier with its air wing. So, a big, expensive carrier with a huge crew is a big liability cause all you need is one hit to sink it. You have a carrier that costs 10 billion, a crew and air wing that costed maybe 100 billion to train and build. thats a juicy lucrative target for the enemy. Even if the enemy spends 1000 missiles its cost effective to target and destroy a carrier. You can over saturate any defenses with large enough salvo of missiles that are fast, manuverable and come from different altitudes.
So, Long term, Navys might switch to maybe much smaller carriers, perhaps drone carriers in order to spread out their firepower instead of concentrating on a big huge carrier. They might switch to relying more on surface ships to project firepower via the use of various types of missiles. Air defense missiles for anti-Air, Cruise missiles for ground attack. Drones or a limited number of manned planes could provide the over the horizon radar capability. That's the only thing you need actually from a plane. Over the horizon radar capability is the only capability for which you need a plane. Everything else can including air defense, ground attack, ship-attack can be done by missiles.
The future of naval power could be surface ships once again which become the main fighting component while carriers become a support role just to provide over the horizon targetting.
