The main technical development in aircraft carrier design during World War II was the hydraulic catapult, but this was barely powerful enough to launch the heavier jet aircraft coming into service after 1945. The problem was solved in 1951, when the British first tested an effective catapult driven by steam from a ship’s boilers.

Jet aircraft landed at much higher speeds than had propeller-driven planes, making the installation of better arresting gear necessary. Also, landing control had to be improved, because the approaching pilot had to make crucial decisions much more quickly. As in the case of the steam catapult, the British supplied the solution, in the form of the angled deck and the mirror (later the Fresnel-lens) landing sight. By building an extension of the flight deck to one side and angling the landing strip onto that extension, the British system allowed a pilot to land away from aircraft parked at the end of the flight deck. If the landing plane missed the arresting wires, the pilot could fly off to try again. In this way mistakes became much less serious.

The mirror landing sight, in effect, allowed pilots to see their own position relative to the required glide path and to make corrections instantly. Previously, an officer on deck, observing the landing, had generally ordered the corrections.

By 1955 the modern jet aircraft carrier had emerged, with steam catapults, an angled deck, and a mirror landing system. The first full jet carrier was USS Forrestal, commissioned in 1955. The 60,000-ton Forrestal carriers were built with rectangular extensions to the after part of the flight deck; these considerably widened the deck and allowed the angled landing strip to be merely painted on rather than extended over the side. The elevators were shifted to the edge of the flight deck, so that they could operate while aircraft were landing and taking off.

The first nuclear-powered carrier, USS Enterprise, was commissioned in 1961. It was equipped with eight nuclear reactors and steamed for more than three years before refueling was necessary. The Enterprise displaced 75,700 tons, carried 100 jet aircraft, and could reach more than 30 knots. Beginning in 1975, 10 Nimitz-class carriers superseded the Enterprise. These 81,600-ton carriers were powered by only two nuclear reactors, yet they reached speeds comparable to the Enterprise, and their uranium cores needed replacement only once every 13 years. The smaller propulsion system created more room for the storage of aviation fuel, which greatly extended the operation of the 90 aircraft carried on these ships.

The last Nimitz carrier was commissioned in 2009, and in that year the keel was laid for the first Gerald R. Ford-class carrier. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the first ship in the class, was delivered to the U.S. Navy in 2017, more than two and a half years behind schedule and nearly $3 billion over budget. The Ford-class carriers were approximately the same size as the Nimitz carriers, but various technological improvements reduced the number of crew members to as few as 2,500 (as opposed to some 3,250 crew members manning a Nimitz carrier). Onboard electric-power generation was greatly increased over that of the Nimitz carriers, mainly to accommodate the revolutionary electromagnetic aircraft launch system, or EMALS. EMALS replaced the classic steam-powered catapult with a 100-metre- (330-foot-) long "linear synchronous motor," an electric motor containing a series of magnetic coils that accelerated the launcher and connected aircraft along the carrier’s deck. Electromagnetic launching reduced stress on the aircraft and launching mechanisms; also, energy generated by the system could be adjusted to aircraft of differing weights. Arresting gear was also be based on electromagnets.

Large U.S. carriers are expected to have a service life of 50 years, and over such a period of time construction and operating costs can climb into the tens of billions of dollars. Such costs place large carriers out of reach of all except the wealthiest countries or those countries willing to spend vast sums for military security or international prestige. In the 1970s and ’80s the Soviet Union considered building large nuclear-powered carriers similar to those of the United States. The keel for the first such ship was laid in 1988, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the unfinished vessel was scrapped. In 2001 the 38,000-ton Charles de Gaulle, a nuclear-powered ship designed to carry 40 aircraft, entered service with the French navy. After that, France canceled plans for further nuclear-powered carriers, though it left open the possibility of building a conventionally powered catapult-equipped carrier to complement its nuclear carrier.