In Iraq and Afghanistan, our insurgent enemies could never step up the escalation ladder to fighting with formed units to actually conquer terrain and hold it:
The enemy had had a hard time adapting to smart weapons. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the enemy largely gave up trying to fight American troops head on. Ambush, roadside bombs and boobytraps became the preferred methods of attacking U.S. troops. This is a major concession by the enemy, and has been a major factor in the success of American forces since JDAM became available. You cannot win if you cannot eventually confront and defeat the enemy ground troops.
And this aerial dominance applies to conventional war, too:
As long as the U.S. maintains air superiority, as it has since 1944, enemy forces will not benefit from the new precision bombs. They will still be able to use precision ground launched missiles and artillery shells, but that will be small consolation when your forces are being pounded by thousands of JDAMs.
If we have air supremacy, those enemy artillery assets won't last too long, actually.
More than anything, our enemies need to find ways to nullify our aerial dominance if they wish to fight us.
That "something" might something as brutally simple as attacking our forces with 20:1 ratios of troops at a high tempo to crush our forces before all our firepower can wipe them all out.
Or it might be stealth applied to ground units. Or air defenses that reach into space to deny us our GPS and communications. Or electronics that nullify our system or just degrade it.
Or it might be an air force that allows our enemy to not just nullify our air power but gain air supremacy for themselves--or at least contest us for air superiority.
Our Air Force needs to stop arguing with the Army over their lost market share as the Army creates its own mini air force for recon and battlefield fire support. Air Supremacy is so vital that our Air Force should aim high to dominate the skies and space above that.
