With Russia fielding hypersonic weapons now, could you imagine if they threaten the US with "Send arms to Ukraine, we sink your aircraft carriers"? In that sense, hypersonic missiles may replace much more costly to maintain and much harder to deploy nuclear weapons.
In fact, it looks like the US has 11 active aircraft carriers [1]. It seems that they are all near port right now [2], this might be the reason.
Still don't understand the value proposition. Mobile air support is pretty important but supersonic missiles and modern submarines could sink or severely damage an aircraft carrier. Perhaps a sub getting away again would be almost impossible but the damage of the carrier would be much more costly, worst case you also lose all the planes. So I would place them in shallow waters near ports too...
My naive understanding is that carriers are not designed for use in conflicts where your enemies are those who can develop hypersonic missiles. Think about Iraq / Afghanistan; the carriers sitting nearby provided support for the invasion. They could easily stay far enough away that they don't have to worry about their safety because their opposition military was not very sophisticated.
Simple: carriers are for power projection against weaker enemies with low tech militaries. Thus their vulnerability against high tech miliraries is a moot point since wars between high tech powers == World war == unlikely (hopefully).
In fact, it looks like the US has 11 active aircraft carriers [1]. It seems that they are all near port right now [2], this might be the reason.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_t... [2] https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/vessels/USS-George-H.W.-...