If you rely on other flying hardwares then you gonna need a carrier to launch them. And if you gonna have carriers, then the flying hardwares will be big for the range necessary for the carrier/mothership to stay out of threat range, you're basically back to a big aircraft. Unless you're thinking foward deployed subs carrying SAM but now the problem is how you can transfer data in real time between your sensor hubs ship and the foward deployed missile magazines.
Any hardware that can't fly supersonic won't be able to reach threat in time (think aircraft launching long range antiship missiles) so you gonna need alot more of these platforms. Intercept the missile with a much more expensive missile is already a problem on top of the fact you need to punish the launching platform as well so it might be more expensive in the end having x amount more of platforms to have the same coverage as air superiority aircraft.
I'm only exploring hypotheticals, so bring it on - it's not personal! Just imagine each of my posts beginning with a long suck of my pipe and a 'Hmmmm.' Future technology will co-evolve in a continual game of Rock, Paper, Scissors and each step will be one of multiple choices.
To be reasonable, I must take your objections as perfectly valid and thank you, begging the question what should be done to counter them. I'll try not so with 'well, they would have wizards on their side because they must in order to win.'
BTW, for the general benefit of readers, a Random Walk:
en.wikipedia.org
With that in mind, one step ahead along this random walk, antagonists are going to be driven by economics to seek asymmetrical solutions. You're outlining a requirement large aircraft launched off supercarriers. I wouldn't dare suggest that supercarriers aren't powerful and effective, but I will suggest that they are expensive and as concentrated centres of power and money, they attract countermeasures and therefore become risky investments. I think that this will lead to their eventual decline, not any actual tactical obsolescence.
Intercepting a missile/drone with a much more expensive missile is exactly the problem we have today in the Middle East. DEWs are presented as a solution. Are they? At relatively short range, apparently so.
Yes, the ecosystem of drones I propose will include large, supersonic types. You're right, something needs to launch them. Is it a carrier as currently conceived though? In the Falklands war, the UK started using container ships as offensive vessels. Today's expeditionary sea base ships converted from civilian designs would have been laughed at a decade ago. Could the future drone-launching successor to today's supercarriers be like them? Iran is trying to do so:
In a dry dock near the entrance to the Persian Gulf, Iran’s sectarian naval force is converting a former merchant container ship into a drone aircraft carrier, according to satellite and open source photos published last week by USNI News contributor H I Sutton. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps...
news.usni.org
Sure, they might be very pathetic front-line warships, but as cheap drone-launching assets, they might be a viable concept.
Co-ordination between services is going to be crucial, I think. The Nato and European forces have practical experience in co-ordinating differing national forces. Naval aviation overcomes range restrictions by putting carriers forward. Air Force planes are designed for range or are less willing to sacrifice it at least. Battle planning should have navies able to call upon assets from other services and exploit their advantages. If a carrier devolves into being a floating landing strip derived from a civilian type, interservice co-ordination has to be developed following the model of international co-operation (yes, there's an obvious joke in interservice co=operation being the same as, if not even more difficult than international co-operation). Also, If navies are willing drones (IF!), MQ-25 like drones operating off these relatively fragile landing strip vessels well behind the line could support frontline supersonic drones if a new naval doctrine tilts that way.
I am aware that I can wave my magic wand here but doing so in the real world is another matter, but there are precedents and possibilities.
By the way, a 'capital ship' is one on which an admiral hoists their flag. It doesn't have to be a supercarier; it has to be a vessel with wide area awareness and command capability. An air defence destroyer could fill that role if carriers as we conceive them now become unsustainable.
As I said, it's a random walk, so looking any more than a couple of steps ahead would be self-deluding.
(Scatter these around the above: if, if, if, if, if, if,)
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