Other air attack weapons had fighter escorts in the past without having the capacity to carry them. All the helicarrier does to that end is increase the chance that your "fighter screen" might be uselessly parked on board when bad guys come calling, instead of alertly flying escort duty. BTW, how much good DID that fighter screen do when Hawkeye came calling? IIRC, a single plane got with the helicarrier, which would never happen against a real life aircraft carrier.

And regarding stealth and covert ops, the ONLY FLYING SHIP in the world is not remotely conducive to that sort of thing. At all. Only if they have magic invisibility technology and magic radar diversion technology, in which case why not put those on something more reasonably and practically sized? "Come on boy, turn this baby around! We have to go to Beijing to exfiltrate a covert operative, then on to Syria to insert a commando unit, then to South America to interdict some narco-terrorists. You could probably afford, for the price of a helicarrier, 30 or so of those VTOL craft they use to board the carrier in the first place, which would be far more useful, operating from a HQ that stays at sea level, and which would appear to have a superior stealth profile.