Duh. And when was the last three times the Brits operated "in anything but a total Air Superiority theater"?
Lets see. The Falklands, WWII and WWI. Three times in the past 96 years.
Using a high performance jet to drop bombs on the head of some guy armed with an AK47 is like using a dragster to deliver pizzas. If cost is no object, and you have all the dragsters you could wish for, and a pizza joint every 1/2 mile, as the dragster only goes 1/4 mile at a time, then delivering pizzas with a dragster makes sense. A dragster will get the pizza there faster than any other type of ground vehicle.
If, on the other hand, resources are limited. If you have only a few, widely scattered, pizzza joints, and if cost is an object, then you don't need a tiny number of super expensive, super fast, dragsters. you need a much larger number of slower, cheaper vehicles.
And the intestinal fortitude to put up with the the tcrlaf's of the world sneering at you that your delivery vehicles aren't as fast as a dragster.
If you were on the ground getting shot at waiting for air support, which would you prefer!?!??!?!?
It’s easy to propose cutting the defense budget when you’re not getting shot at. What is the acceptable trade-off of lives lost per dollar saved? Did McNamara leave us an equation for that???