As far as Aronnax was from the mark, can I advance the little matter of throwing nuclear missles around? That's a pretty important job.
I assumed we were talking about conventional warfare, in a nuclear war China's navy matters even less.
In a sea-fleet on sea-fleet battle, wouldn't submarines have a stronger more advantageous edge of being much harder to hit as well as to detect?
I would imagine if a lone air-craft carrier was to camp out outside of the enemy's coastal waters, a lone submarine would be able to sneak out and torpedo the carrier much more effectively than the other way round.
There is a balancing act between certain characteristics. Low profile and weapons range are two of the most valuable in naval warfare. Unfortunately in most cases you have to sacrifice one to get the other. A submarine is very low profile, but it is very much a local asset. A carrier is high profile, but it has the capability of controlling thousands of square miles of sea space at any one time, and not just in the USW and SUW sense but also the AAW, MIO and Strike areas.
Yeah, we could put a submarine right off China's coast all by its lonesome and it will very likely survive just fine, but what is it going to do? Lob a few tomahawks, sure, but they have a very finite number. Their presence will chill Chinese operations and provide a measure of sea control, but a submarine is not going to waste warshots on random merchants or minor warships, it only has a couple dozen short range torpedoes and maybe a few Harpoons.
A carrier off the coast of China, however, exercises complete uncontested control of whole regions of sea space. It has a practically limitless supply of ordnance of all types including highly specialized ones. It can refuel and reprovision at sea, and it can extend its strike power hundreds of miles inland. So while it is certainly a much harder platform to keep alive than the submarine, the rewards for doing so are far higher at the same time.
And of course we don't deploy carriers alone, we deploy them with a half dozen DDGs and CGs which by themselves bring with them hundreds of TLAMs to augment the carrier strike capabilities. Those vessels are also the most capable AAW assets in the world, and denying your enemy effective air control is a priceless asset (which of course the carrier is quite helpful at too).
So it’s a trade off. China has no real competitive edge in any warfare area except USW, in at that it is only competitive in as much as it can slightly degrade our ability to operate in the other warfare areas. And by slightly degrade we are talking about not being able to operate with complete impunity. That is obviously a change considering the wars the US has fought in the last 70 years, but is just not having complete impunity really that crippling a thing if you really think about it? No, that’s how all major wars involving powerful nations are.
I like submarines, they play a pivotal role in the fleet and I wish we had more (diesel) to play with. But that doesn't mean carriers are somehow not still the most capable platform we have.
When alone, doesn't the aircraft carrier lose its effectiveness of airpower against a submarine?
The carrier has a plethora of helicopters and aircraft dedicated to nothing but ASW, the carrier is more than capable of finding and destroying submarines all on its own. Its obviously a lot better at doing that with escorts, but then that’s obvious.
To be clear, I am not saying there is no potential for a submarine to penetrate and get to the HVU, but that has always been the case form the invention of the submarine on. Same for aircraft.