@Smokin Joe
For maybe 30 minutes,then every Naval vessel afloat in Asian water and probably everywhere else will just disappear.
BIG-ass targets with nowhere to hide and too slow to run away.
With the exception of the subs,that is. They will be around to take out the Chinese Navy and ports,but will have no where to dock,so the ones that survive will be looking for a safe place to surface close to a safe shore so the crew can abandon ship and head to shore.
Nuclear subs may have the capability of remaining at sea for decades,but when they run out of food they have to surface so the sailors can come ashore. Providing,of course,there is such a place after a major nuke war.
My thoughts on the Ford class flattops is just that: bigger targets than ever. If they can increase the standoff range and improve missile defense in the fleet, fine, but otherwise, we're in the same boat as the Japs at Midway, with all our nickels on a few ships, and our escort vessels with thinner skins than ever.
The Chinese have subs, too, and I have little doubt they have stolen every bit of technology they can from us and the rest of the world, and their manufacturing is as good as they want to make it. We have funded it with our purchases of their stuff for decades, now.
The scenario of which you speak has been sorta tried in fiction.
As with
The Last Ship and
The Dawn's Early Light the name of the show was "
The Last Resort" and dealt with a nuke sub and crew with no place left to go...set up to appear to have defied a valid launch order and declared rogue.
Someone somewhere has war gamed every scenario, and some of it even made prime time, but no doubt that wargaming is ongoing.
IMHO, the Chinese Island Building in the south China Sea hasn't been limited to expanding the Spratleys and others to put in air bases (which, with a kamikaze mentality, severely expands their range with airborne weapons), but has included building 'speedbumps' out there that now and then, US subs have run into. Of course, the captains of the vessels get the blame, but charts are charts, until someone changes the bathymetry. The Sundra Shelf is generally under 300 ft of water or less, and it wouldn't take a lot, considering other island building efforts, to make a few piles out there that could stop a sub cold.
