Less then you might think on location. The CIC on all USN super carriers till Ford (not sure on her) is on the gallery deck, between the flight deck and the hanger. And thus while protected overhead by deck armor, that's about two inches thick with sky (and parked planes loaded with bombs) overhead. A very strong reason for doing this was that the cable runs between the radar and certain radio antennas and the actual equipment controlling them could only be a finite length with equipment into the 1990s.Elheru Aran wrote:Even modern carriers do have a sort of command and control room within the body of the carrier; the bridge at the top is strictly for navigational and flight control purposes only. The command and control room is where the actual direction of war efforts goes.
Only very recently has that become much less of a problem by incorporating digital and now fiber optic links directly into the equipment guts. This was technologically impossible before the 1990s, and still only partly implemented, though in part because since then the relevant tech has changed rapidly. Of course Trek cannot use this excuse s.
Practical reasons also existed for not burying the CIC deep under the hanger deck, to keep the ranking officers closer together and able to access the island. But this is also directly linked the fact that carrier is in the water... and no way to spin this around for a bridge at the top of the Enterprise to make sense.