[DarthVader]

Jeff,

Using an aircraft carrier in confined littoral waters is useless. You might as well use land based aircraft. An aircraft carrier is an open ocean power projection weapon which has utility in the littoral battlespace as an attacking platform. There are many ways to kill a carrier you can use Tomahawk, Harpoon, Harpoon SLAM, SRAM and evem ALCM's among other things. All of these can be lauched from a number of different platforms. Equippped with the right warhead you can even take out a task force.

I bet we could put more missiles in the air than their AD DDG's can handle (attack from many platforms [air,surface,undersea] with different weapons,no defense shield is impervious)and many of the missiles we would shoot would be targeting the escorts first. Once you take them out it gets interesting.

[Jeff Head]

I believe they will use the ship as a political tool...and in any intital exchanges, as a method of drawing our own forces (sub surface and air) in to to get her, hoping to inflict as many losses on our forces as possible in the exchange.

We shall see. It is clear, that even if peace holds, that it will be years before the PLAN is proficient in her use in any case.