The race is on to reach sunken US F-35C before China
bbc.com
bbc.com
Surely, this is a huge problem with whole carrier's philosophy then. Things go down in war.
However, in a full scale conflict against a "developed" adversary any carrier showing up (e.g. near China) would be met with a barrage of modern missiles, torpedoes, and drones and I'm really wondering if it would survive long...
Now, I'm sure that they have extensive defensive systems but, on the other hand, a developed and sophisticated adversary is most likely also capable of attacking by firing 10-20 missiles at once, etc... Sinking an aircraft carrier is a major win, both operationally and for propaganda. So I'm thinking the sun has already set on aircraft carriers in such scenarios.