I think network-centric warfare makes carriers obsolete for sea control missions. So I don't think drone carriers make super carriers obsolete for that. But it is possible that drone carriers make super carriers obsolete for power projection missions, a role I thought super carriers could continue to play with fewer carriers.
This author has high hopes for drone carriers:
Critics have long predicted the demise of the aircraft carrier. Submarines, anti-ship missiles and “carrier-killer” ballistic missiles are supposed to end the dominance enjoyed by flattops since Pearl Harbor.
Now, traditional aircraft carriers face another threat: being replaced by carriers that launch drones rather than aircraft. These vessels may also be so automated that they are almost drones themselves.
I've noted drone carriers. As we debate what sea-based aviation should look like--they are an option. But I don't think they are the silver bullet that does what subs, anti-ship missiles, and anti-ship ballistic missiles didn't achieve against aircraft carriers. Although to be fair, big carriers haven't faced a major threat during a war since 1945, so we may simply not have had a chance to see the evidence of success from that series of threats.
While I've worried about the cited threats, there are ways to break kill chains. So I don't think carriers were seriously threatened in a way above and beyond what any ships in any era faced until the rise of network-centric warfare:
The question of whether large aircraft carriers deserve to be the center of our future naval strategy is a fundamental question that has not been adequately explored. Network-centric warfare signals the beginning of the end for the United States Navy's large aircraft carriers. They will lose their value as an instrument of forward presence and become valuable targets that, if struck, will encourage an enemy at the outset of war by apparently demonstrating that American technological prowess can be nullified and beaten. In the long run, large aircraft carriers will add little to most offensive missions and will absorb scarce resources and assets simply evading attack rather than striking the enemy and contributing to victory.
Now that series of threats--modernized and linked--will combine in a single threat swarm. So yes, cheap drone carriers could be one more type of node in a networked kill web--or whatever the term of art is now. Carriers are losing their starring role.
But I distinguished between sea control against an array of enemy anti-ship threats and power projection that focused on dispatching military power ashore against enemies incapable of threatening the naval forces over the horizon or even operating in the littorals.
With carriers already at risk of being expensive burning hulks in a sea control war, drone carriers with long-range reusable drones could kill the super carrier power projection role.
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NOTE: I made the image with Bing.
