[Aric2000]

This may seem like a pipedream, but this is what I think we should do. A small aircraft carrier is Great, but then add to that concept a submarine. A GIANT submarine with aircraft within it's belly.

The boat surfaces, opens it's aircraft doors and start launching aircraft. pops up anytime, anywhere, no escorts needed. Pops up. launches it's planes then goes back down until it is time for retrieval. The planes are lifted to the top flight deck and take off, just like on a normal carrier. Doesn't need to be a deep water sub, 3-500 feet would do it.

Surface, launch, submerge, surface, retrieve, submerge, and off to it's next theater. It would be huge, but it would be capable of much more and would be less expensive then the fleet of ships it takes now to support a carrier.

[Constantine XIII]

It also wouldn't be as vulnerable to nukes as surface ships, provided we could get it to go a little deeper, no? Set off at full power and submerge before impact, but I don't know enough about the stresses such a thing would cause or what subs are designed to withstand to do anything other than wave my hands :O)

[Non-Sequitur]

Too big, too noisy, to vulnerable to other submarines for a start. The key in ASW is quiet. Quiet buys you invisibility. Quiet buys you safety. Nothing is noisier than a submarine blowing it's tanks to surface except maybe a submarine in the process of submerging. Do that a couple of times and you can be pinpointed from hundreds of miles away if the water conditions are right.

[Polybius]

This may seem like a pipedream, but this is what I think we should do. A small aircraft carrier is Great, but then add to that concept a submarine. A GIANT submarine with aircraft within it's belly.

A submarine aircraft carrier?

Of course it's a pipedream. Nobody would ever go for such a ridiculous idea.

H.I.J.M.S. I-400: JAPAN'S SUBMERSIBLE AIRCRAFT CARRIER