Are big warships just targets?

[uk 75]

From the aged Belgrano to the Moskva large warships have proved vulnerable. The aircraft carrier and the large missile carrying surface ship whether cruiser or battleship continue to appeal as symbols of power and determination. Only the US and China can build them in any quantity while France, India , Russia and the UK have token vessels.
How valuable and how vulnerable are these ships?
The UK made up its mind in 1966 for financial reasons to choose a fleet of nuclear hunter killer subs over a new carrier. In 1982 these subs kept the Argentinian fleet bottled up. Could a single CVA01 have done as well or better?
Carrier airpower in the 1950s included bombers able to strike targets in Russia from the Med or N Atlantic. Today's carrier aircraft are not as ambitious.

 

[Ainen]

From the aged Belgrano to the Moskva large warships have proved vulnerable. The aircraft carrier and the large missile carrying surface ship whether cruiser or battleship continue to appeal as symbols of power and determination. Only the US and China can build them in any quantity while France, India , Russia and the UK have token vessels.

In this sense large warships are vulnerable since Actium. It doesn't change their viability.

UK and Russia simply went extremely complacent in assuming LOCs are free because they're free, and that's the order of things.
UK - based on assuming US power is as good as theirs for practical purposes. Russia - that nukes are a replacement for naval policy. Both waste enough resources for significant fleet in principle, but fail at governance.
France does well (good translation of budget into fleet capabilities). India is still in process of build up.

 

[Dilandu]

From the aged Belgrano to the Moskva large warships have proved vulnerable. The aircraft carrier and the large missile carrying surface ship whether cruiser or battleship continue to appeal as symbols of power and determination. Only the US and China can build them in any quantity while France, India , Russia and the UK have token vessels.
How valuable and how vulnerable are these ships?
The UK made up its mind in 1966 for financial reasons to choose a fleet of nuclear hunter killer subs over a new carrier. In 1982 these subs kept the Argentinian fleet bottled up. Could a single CVA01 have done as well or better?
Carrier airpower in the 1950s included bombers able to strike targets in Russia from the Med or N Atlantic. Today's carrier aircraft are not as ambitious.

Red Sea campaign demonstrated the opposite; large warships are very resistant to attacks.

 

[GruntFox]

Red Sea campaign demonstrated the opposite; large warships are very resistant to attacks.

To be honest, the Red Sea shoot simply showed that the 'floor' has risen a lot in the last few decades, much like how, after the initial weeks of the war in Ukraine, airpower has largely been reduced to essentially flying artillery pieces at best, and drones have had their failure rate skyrocket when air defense and E-War gets semi-competent at the minimum.