Andrew Swallow wrote:

Know thy enemy. Do not fall into the trap of preparing to
fight the last war but not the next one.

The planes and submarines are enemies. The Chinese attack
submarines are being built to sink US aircraft carriers. See
previous posts on sci.military.naval. There may be sufficient
submarines to make a gap through the escort ships.

Since aircraft carriers do not have large guns and torpedoes have a
longer range than depth charges the carrier will have to rely on
its aircraft for defence. So what ever aircraft are purchased for
the ship will need the ability to find and/or sink submarines.

So as well as top gun vs top gun the US Navy needs to do top gun
vs bottom gun.

Andrew Swallow

Good point. The retirement of the S-3 And the slow new production of a
P-3 replacement does leave a real gap in capability. While low and slow
and boring, ASW is a need part of Nav air that a F-18 can't fill.