re: #727 BeerDrinking_VictoryMonkey

Puts me in mind of Britain’s infamous statement that manned aircraft were obsolete in the mid 1950s.

I think it was 1956 when “Defence” Minister Denis Healy issued a White Paper doing away with the Fleet Air Arm because “the RAF can go anywhere the Navy can.” After a bunch of Sailors died at the Falklands, the RN started getting back into the aviation business.

The fact is that a modern Air Force can only conduct sustained operations from a friendly country with a lot of gas.
We learned the wrong lesson for Gulf War I, which was that an Air Force can do anything anywhere, and war is no longer difficult.