Which arm would you prefer to lose? Right or left?? Or right eye or left eye??
Both are important to various reasons. Nitesh has already come up with them. India being a no first use declared country needs an effective second strike option and the subs give us that. Carriers and surface fleets are required for what they have been traditionally and also the carriers to protect fleet and also secondary strike role.
So we cannot sacrifice one for the other. What can be done is optimize based on threat perception.
A submarine can fit into the ship, but the ship can not fit into it!
Both are sea branch assets of a nation.....
Ships are more vulnerable than vice versa.....
Such is the deadly force of modern and accurate menacing missiles like Brahmos and Sunburn that Some have even warned that the US Navy's largest ships, the massive carriers, have now become floating death traps, and should be mothballed.
So far no one has seen the mass cruise missile attack, but should it happen with multiple salvo, above is stark reality!
QUOTE:
"Nine feet above water, traveling at twice the speed of sound, with a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead, the radar-guided Sunburn missile can weave its way through smaller ships until it reaches its real target -- a US aircraft carrier. At the last instant, it would pop up from the ocean's surface, smash into the side of the carrier and set off a nuclear explosion six times as powerful as Hiroshima. The US Navy has nothing that can stop it."
Had Argentina possessed about fifty Exocet missiles (instead of five which downed two UK frigates/destroyers) during the Falkland war or Guerra De Las Malvinas, they could have converted all British ships to underwater museums. Such is the ferocity of missiles in today's conventional war asymmetry.
(It was Stinger missile that changed the war scenario of Afghanistan downing most of the Russian choppers-Helicopters)
Now imagine punching a hole in one of the US aircraft carrier (which comprises of several sister escort ships) and rendering it inoperable or sinking it with couple of more strikes, that would change the course of any war.
US aircraft carriers or floating airports as they are known, which are the weapons of choice of USG that during the crisis any president is left asking where are our aircraft carriers, cause they don't need any permission from host countries as they perform in international waters and not littoral.
Forget 1971 Nuke threat a la Kissinger with 7th fleet, USS ENTERPRISE, NO MORE!
Underwater assets on the contrary are much safer n secure, away from the likes of Tomahawks. Nuke submarine can not be pin pointed underwater, but sure within the radius of couple of miles. Nuclear submarines go deep underwater where optical detection is less practical and to kill it with depth charge is further dificult, cause the depth charge needs to explode in the close vicinity of submarine to peneterate its hull.
Depth charges are typically used in a barrage manner in order to cause significant damage through continually battering the submarine with concussive blasts. In many cases destruction was not achieved, but the submarine was none-the-less forced to retire for repairs.
To avoid the depth charge, modern nuclear submarine has to be on the move at full throttle to avoid the detection angle during the crissis.
During 1971, PNS Ghazi came in the hunt for Vikrant which was travelling to Bay of Bengal. PNS Ghazi (US Gift to Pak) came as far as Vizag, tried to lay mines, and its understood that one of it (Hertz horn) exploded and Ghazi got converted into the underwater grave.......(there are conflicting reports though of its destruction from various accounts).
Underwater assests are must for a nation having Nuclear triad notion and No First Strike principle like India.
In fact, the celebrated General (Padmanabahan), who is retired, thereby privy to all
Indo-US contacts, believes that Washington would prove a threat to
India`s national interests at some time. Please read his book "Writing on the wall" "India Checkmates America 2017" worth its money.
