> TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else.
Eh the USN can still maintain superiority outside of the South China Sea which means control of global trade. It’s not like it’s useless or anything even if the Taiwan straight turns into a dead zone or if the USN has to worry about missiles from the Chinese mainland. China also has to worry about missiles hitting their mainland industrial centers and naval facilities too.
The US won't hit the mainland because that would escalate the war into WW3. The rest of the world will likely just give Taiwan to China and move on.
If Putin had stopped at Crimea we'd all have lived with it too.
Look at DoDs China report last few years, specifically PRC fielded conventional strike. PRC DF26, H6xCJ20s already can hit every essential SLOC from Malacca to MENA at volume, DF27 reaches west coast and Europe. There isn't really anywhere except Atlantic (and south America) where USN can operate permissively, i.e. every shipping lane PRC needs (for energy in next 10 years) is already covered. As for missiles hitting mainland, we're really talking about attritional game, PRC A2D2 works as advertised and they can potentially blunt much of the fires from being deliverable to mainland, and there's also sheer scale asymmetry, i.e. PRC pouring more concrete in 10 years than US in past 100. That's just a stupendous amount of infra to break. Meanwhile DF27 can hit west coast, in a few years they'll have DF27+ that reach most of CONUS. The real question then is who can deliver more fires, can win attrition game, can reconstitute faster. And vs PRC, it may not be US considering they put so much fires generation on carriers that may not be able to deliver any munitions under PRC A2D2 and the 30-40 B21 replacement (we're talking 10 years out) barely replaces one carrier in fire power. Meanwhile PRC has global strike eggs is mostly in mainland based ICBMs that skips entire delivery vehicle middle man and can potentially hit CONUS and everything in between with high survivability. And ample surplus industry/construction sector to rebuild. The TLDR is once hemispheric hypersonic proliferates more, USN can't operate permissively in any of the theatres PRC really cares about.
But again that doesn't mean USN can't operate permissively vs literally anyone else, even on legacy platforms that still grossly overmatches every other adversary regardless of acquisition malpractice.