So, assumin’ we’re serious, we lead with a sub-launched cruise missile attack on the relevant airfields? A few of those “repurposed” SSBNs can launch an awful lot of SLCMs.
It ain’t cut and dried. The USN spends a lot of time and money thinking about this stuff and how to win it. They publish and use the “worst case” scenarios (like “Indian Sukhois ‘beating’ F-18s in exercises”) to lobby for money, but there is a lot more to it than they ever let on.
Yes, I know that this is a worst case scenario, but situations like this have happened before, just on smaller scales.