You're pretty dismissive, but I've read some pretty credible sources saying that exercise was quite the upset. You cannot possibly expect enemies to "follow rules" either. In a real war Blizzard wouldn't be able to "reset".

Intuitively speaking, too, I have great difficulty understanding how carriers could possibly repel massed attacks of low value craft/missiles. And that's not even counting the Dong Fengs, etc. I have a romantic nostalgia for carriers as much as anyone but I can't see how they are anything other than gigantic sitting ducks in the microchip era.