but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance In terms of the levels of force being exchanged in a full-scale war, it's not that much force and

but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance In terms of the levels of force being exchanged in a full-scale war, it's not that much force and it's not that much distance, relative to what a peer adversary like China can bring to a fight in their own backyard. It's ~130 ship-launched guided missiles and ~75 fighter jets. They will not be operating at a stand-off distance relative to the reach of cruise and ballistic missiles launched from Chinese homeland. And the planes are not going to be able to take off and land if the carrier is executing evasive maneuvers because of missile attack. If you were China, how would you tackle that? Is there any reason you wouldn't just send several waves of several hundred missiles their way? Carrier strike groups are still useful. 130 missiles and 75 jets is plenty to dissaude most countries on earth. Just not the biggest ones, if they have committed to waging a full-scale war against you. China would definitely not emerge unscathed. The CSG would be augmented with a lot of longer range stuff such as US fighters/bombers/missiles/subs launched from elsewhere. But I mean, I think the CSG gets effectively deleted in the first few hours of war. Hope I'm wrong.