China Launches it's first Aircraft Carrier for a test run

[Seamus Fermanagh]

UAVs will become a tool of the future. They will probably NOT replace all piloted combat planes, but will take over for quite a percentage of them.

As pappy noted above:

You can manuever to the limits of the airframe, not the pilot. Some airframes could handle 20g turns, almost certainly lethal to a human pilot.
You can take risks you would never take with a pilot.
You can pack more of them into a given space for transport/deployment.
You can minimize physical limitations on piloting. A drone with pilots taking over at intervals, can be flown to the limits of required maintenance, not human endurance.
Drone carriers, because of size and recovery differences, could be made (are?) using large submersible hulls for maximum stealth.

The carrier China is fielding is a ramp carrier. This is a no-doubt electronically updated version of what Maggie's mariners sailed into harm's way in the Falklands. Air supremacy did not come quickly in the Falklands and one Chinese carrier cannot radically alter the power projection ability of the Chinese. It will serve as a testbed and training tool, and may be a harbinger of much change in the future, but of itself is a little limited.

The USA is already working hard to move past the supercarrier that has so dominated naval thinking during the last 4 decades. They are too large a target in the era of stealth technology. Though by no means obsolete, the carrier's current iteration isn't really very different in thinking from the Lady Lex, the Shokaku, or the Ark Royal. It needs to move in a different direction entirely.

EDIT: American exceptionalist that I am, I chuckled over the Chinese shipyard crane labels.