Thee RANT

China’s most likely approach in my opinion is to beat us to death in an economic war,

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 The great divide/defensive wall for us is the Pacific and and the resultant space  (above & below) between us!

Before WWII, Japan by conquest, had to seek out materials for supporting their population and making war that they did not have..That required lots of vessels for shipping and turned out to be their Achilles heel!
China is in that same position...You need  shipping  and a big Navy with support bases to protect the fruits of conquest, something that they are a long way from achieving or ever will!

Could carriers become obsolete?? I don’t think
in the near future, and I certainly hope not. I am sure some of the more knowledgeable posters who might have had first hand experience in the Navy know much more of the carriers task force defensive capabilities then myself. The one thing that is important for our armed forces leaders is to keep an open mind. 100 years ago the proponents of the Carrier as the next formidable weapon of the Navy was laughed at by the Battleship Admirals. We know how that turned out.

In WWII, carriers were handicapped by the range of their aircraft to about 400 miles round trip (RT) from a picked battle site...Today without air tankers, it's about 3000 miles RT for carrier launched planes to the chosen point of engagement!
These US Navy planes can strike targets from 100 miles out....quite a defensive distance for detection of incoming counter offensive  weapons from above or below..i.e., if the area of a US group of attacking ships is known..

Pacific is a big place..!

the most feared weapon at sea is a well trained submarine. they are the snipers of the sea. as for a carriers defense, it is extensive and more so with her escorting DDG's and CG's. Even with all that they can be overwhelmed, so the idea is to target the other guys missile systems first. the unmanned assets are rapidly growing in numbers and complexity. communications will be a problem. sats shot up, blinded, killed. so rapid replacement by Musk, Bezos's and one or two others space programs is imperative. 
any war with chy-na would ultimately be fighting over land. island hopping one again. if chy-na moves so will the NorK's. It is a complicated scenario with other state actors involved, Iran, Pakistan, India, Vietnam Taiwan and Israel. you hope it never happens, but big balls of chy-na will eventually want to hit something.