China is working on a similar system for its future carriers. Donald Trump may want to go back to 1920s-level technology, but the rest of the world isn't.

Drons change the way politicians think about war. You already have society's barriers against war dropping, and now you have a technology that takes the barriers to the ground. We can carry it out without having to deal with some of the consequences of sending our sons and daughters into harm's way.

The best way to create cost overruns in any military acquisition is to change course midstream. That is exactly what Donald Trump wants to do here.

I do think we are seeing the definition of what is a carrier changing. You can turn America-class amphibious assault ships into smaller, less expensive versions of carriers. You can equip surface ships like destroyers as well as submarines with not just missiles and torpedoes but drones than can do roles traditionally performed by carrier aircraft, like surveillance or even strike, such as finding and taking out opponents' missile batteries.

Robots are emotionless, so they don't get upset if their buddy is killed, they don't commit crimes of rage and revenge. But ... they see an 80-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair the same way they see a T80 tank; they're both just a series of zeros and ones.

When a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother.

We are not getting rid of carriers any time soon. This is both because of their utility and also because of their role in Navy culture and in the defense-industrial complex. It is an academic debate.