Aircraft Carrier vs Cruise Missile

If you were to do an online search for “aircraft carriers”on GoogleNews, you will come across recent references to the 1996 Taiwan Straits crisis from Asian news sources. That year President Bill Clinton sent a carrier battle group into the waters between Taiwan and the mainland to deter a Chinese invasion. Almost forgotten in the West, it made a lasting impression on the Chinese who are determined to sink an American aircraft carrier.
Despite their great size and power, carriers are vulnerable to modern weapons, and you don’t have to sink her to disable her air group. During the Cold War, US submarines literally ran rings around the carriers during war games. In his biography Admiral Sandy Woodward, British commander of the Falkland Island task force, told of piercing a carrier’s defensive screen while he was in command of a cruise missile destroyer.
Throughout the Cold War, Russia spent much effort on sinking a US carrier. She developed an awesome array of supersonic missiles, which make the American Tomahawk look like a “spitball”. Both America and Russia have developed supercavitating underwater rockets, some of which reportedly reaches supersonic speed.
Such weaponry is rapidly falling into the hands of potential enemies, such as Iran, China, and North Korea. In this new age of precision warfare, its obvious America must rethink the type of warships it needs, and how they are built.