Both can be true - carriers and traditional air force are not obsolete but also western armies are unprepared to deal with the threat posed by a large number of cheap drones which can quickly deplete traditional air defense (based on SAM systems).
From what I see in news both the US and the UK are using expensive missiles to shut down Shahed drones and laser weapons are not mentioned at all - either they are too rare or not yet working reliably enough to risk letting a drone to get withing the range or laser weapons (which I assume is smaller than for missiles).
The news is outright wrong about that. Yes, as a last ditch measure patriots etc are used to shoot down leaker drones, but the primary weapon systems to take down the slow moving drones are APKWS rockets on fighters, and helicopter gunships using cannon fire.
There is definitely an argument to be made that even APKWS is too expensive due to the cost of flying a F16 per hour, but it’s not at the level of a few million dollar missile.
Obviously the US was in no way prepared for the Iranian response, but it’s not like zero development has happened in the last few years. It’s far too slow, but it’s deployed and in active use in combat. Hopefully this will be a wake up call that military procurement and domestic manufacturing needs to be wholesale reconfigured with breakneck speed. Doubtful though without much more pain felt directly by American citizens.
The US relies primarily on a weapon system called APKWS to shoot down drones. These guided missiles are cheaper than a Shahed. A single fighter jet can carry ~40 of them.
These weapons have been around since the early 2010s, they aren't new, and have been deployed in the Middle East for many years. They were literally designed for killing swarms of Shahed-style drones.
I dunno about what Israel is doing, but a ship usually has enough power to fire 1 or 2 lasers at a time. It takes 10s of seconds to destroy a drone, and each drone stays in range for 1 or 2 minutes.
Or, that is their advertised capabilities. Countries that buy them usually complain that they don't work as well on practice.
Well, assume the advertised capabilities are realistic. Assume it takes 15 seconds to destroy a drone, the drone stays in range for 2 minutes, and you can fire on 2 drones at a time.
You can destroy 16 drones every 2 minutes. If you get attacked by 50 drones, you'll get 16-20 of them. Did that help you?
If carriers would be designed for drones and missiles and guns instead of for manned aircraft, it is likely that it would be preferable to have a great number of small carriers, instead of a few vulnerable huge carriers.
The launch of drones and missiles could be completely automated and there would be no need for the complex maintenance of reusable airplanes, so such carriers would need only a much smaller crew.
