If I may nitpick boofhead's otherwise excellent, lucid (and entertaining) description, VHF airband comms are AM (Amplitude Modulated) transmissions which means -- as he correctly implies -- much of the transmitter energy goes into the carrier wave while the speech content goes into the two sidebands which waggle around either side of the carrier frequency.
With SSB (Single Sideband, suppressed carrier, usually used on HF 3-30 MHz), one sideband is selected for final (power) amplification and transmission. That way, all the transmitter's energy goes into sending information, not the base frequency signal. At the receiver end, the carrier frequency is re-inserted to give the reference point (or base frequency) for the speech information in the single sideband signal that has been transmitted.
Detection (more correctly, demodulation) involves measuring the variation in frequency between the sideband and the base frequency which then supplies the original voice frequencies.
DSB signals may also be "suppressed carrier" yet not be AM, where the carrier is always transmitted.
UHF speech (above 300MHz) is usually NBFM (Narrow Band Frequency Modulated) as opposed to your FM stereo which is WB FM (Wide Band Freqency Modulated).