The future of the Aircraft Carrier in a conflict with China

The Future of the Aircraft Carrier

With the shift of the US Strategy in foreign policy and defense more toward the Pacific Rim and less toward Europe. This has brought attention to a weakness in our naval strategy as it relates to the Pacific.  This weakness is because of several factors;  One, the navy has increased the numbers and length of deployments of almost all class of ships, two, the aircraft carrier has not changed it basic mission and reason for existing.  It is a mobile naval airbase.  Three, the assumed threat is China and it has been aggressive in developing a anti-ship and anti access capability or its official term anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) threat.  It is the capability to deny naval forces in to areas they consider territorial and national coastal areas.  The current problem is China is in dispute with both the Philippines and Vietnam with the Spratly islands and Japan with the Senkaku Islands.

The (A2/AD) threat is a long-term situation that has to be mitigated in some way if the United States is to freely engage in that area and insure freedom of navigation for all.  However, from a military standpoint the carrier require a heavy support system for survival. The aircraft that are assigned to the carrier have a short range without constant refueling.  The aircraft’s weapons are only short range stand-off weapons.  The carrier air wing must also supply its own  air defense suppression capability.  An air wing cannot sustain heavy flight operation tempo for more than a few days.  A wing cannot hit multiple targets effectively if they have a strong air defense system. 

No matter the reason of the conflict between the US and China and part of the conflict requires military air strikes in to China, the aircrafts  from the carrier are going to be first needed as part of the (A2/AD) threat suppression just to get in range to effective strike the targets necessary as to positive conclude the conflict.  So the question boils down to this.  Should the Aircraft Carrier be consider a primary weapons system/platform to risk it?  To expand the energy to get it in place for continuous air operations or is it a platform that is primarily used to defeat the A2/AD threat in the case of a conflict with China.  Or, is the carrier a too costly of a platform to even be used?