[Little Ray]

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.

[Stonewall Jackson]

A few good missile strikes would really help out, but what if we are heading there for a "flag waving" mission, say another crisis in the Taiwan Straits. The Chinese decide that they have no option but to take out our carriers and have their birds in the air and heading toward them before anyone realizes what is happening.

Yes, I know that this is a worst case scenario, but situations like this have happened before, just on smaller scales.