As for the carrier itself, it's terminal defenses leave alot to be desired. Phlanx has very short time to react to incoming supersonic A/S missiles, RAM does better with a five mile range and is fire and forget but uses time in the aiming process. Sea Sparrow is limited to three ready to fire eight round launchers and the limited number of directors and missiles can be saturated.
What is needed is to replace Phlanx with the Italian 76mm Super Rapid gun mount firing guided subcaliber beam riding rounds and installed in it's nonpenetrating deck version. This weapon can achieve kills at 8000 meters although percentage wise, the five shot salve kill rate at maximum range is significantly reduced but at that range, unguided shells have almost no capability. I'll have to check Friedman's Naval Weapons for exact figures.
A phased either passive or active is needed to permit datalinked guidance of Evolved Sea Sparrow fired from three small/short length Mk 41 VLS eight cell launchers, each cell containng quadpaked ESSM (32 rounds for each of three launchers or 96 ready roundstotal) and illuminators which can be time shared with three missiles in terminal illumination per director using a phased array horizon radar like SPY-3 MFR which should be fitted along with the VSR to all active carriers on a programed basis.
Carriers would have smaller escort forces with just two nuclear powered escorts but with greatly enhanced carrier point defenses and the enhancements of CEC over the horizon SM-6 ERAM it might perhaps work. Currently, carrier point defense is just too limited against air attack.
The lack of an antitorpedo torpedo system which Russian Navy has is in the US underfunded developement program that denies carriers of an effective self defense against torpedoes and further complicates carrier vulnerability.
