Looking through old things I found a magazine called
Firepower that had the wrong end of the stick regarding the role of the carrier:
It an ideal world, there would be nothing but strike aircraft....
The US Navy planners did not agree - and planned to increased the long range air defence capabilities of the carrier, with a new long range weapon to replace the AIM-54 Phoenix and a desire to fit this (and AMRAAM) not only to the Tomcat but also the Hornet and Intruder. These excerpts are from Norman Friedman's
Fighters Over the Fleet - Naval Air Defence from Biplanes to the Cold War:
Meanwhile, the ASW capabilities of the carrier group were improving with the S-3B Viking and the replacement of the SH-3 Sea King with the radar equipped SH-60, and the capabilities against surface combatants were not neglected. This
article by a former US Navy S-3 Viking Sensor Operator may interest you.
As we made our way up the North American east coast with the amphibious strike group, we were joined by a Canadian Task Force off of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Then, just south of Iceland, we were further reinforced by the primary NATO ASW Strike Force under command of the British on board the “Harrier-carrier” HMS Illustrious
(R06).Over the next few days, we fought an opposed penetration of the GIUK Gap, simulating NATO’s failure to anticipate Soviet preparation for a war. Ideally, our forces would already be in the Norwegian fjords before the deployment of the Red Banner Northern and Baltic Fleets….ideally.
With the addition of some of our escorts with towed sonar arrays and the full Canadian task force, the NATO ASW Strike Force set about clearing the waters between Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe and Shetland Islands. The Ticonderoga
class cruisers worked with our E-2s and Tomcats to defend against the various Soviet Naval Aviation threats that opposed us...
The author goes on to describe the use of airborne radar to keep hostile submarines down, and then an exercise in which the simulated long range anti ship missiles that represented the enemy threat were cued by a helicopter....
History did not end with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Geography and Physics are largely unchanged. Peer competition has returned with a bang, and the issues of protecting sea lines of communication and having amphibious capabilities as responses to aggression are back on the agenda. The current events in Ukraine illustrate the increasing tension and divide between the liberal democracies of the West (not defined by Geography as much as value) and the authoritarian regimes of Russia and China, and their allies such as Iran and North Korea. As noted by the First Sea Lord not so long ago, international interdependency has been highlighted.