Historically I can’t think of any instances of AAA doing so well. The Germans invested huge amounts in AAA with only moderate success at huge formations on bombing runs. The NVA, for all they put into AAA and SAMs didn’t shoot down that many US aircraft. The Stingers we provided to the muj inflicted casualties on Soviet aircraft, but I’m not aware of it being significat enough to deny the battlespace to Soviet aircraft.
I agree, I never saw the need for AAA fire especially in the advent of SAM. The Germans realizing this (too late) developed the Wasserfall.Wasserfall was essentially an anti-aircraft development of the V2 rocket, sharing the same general layout and shaping. Since the missile had to fly only to the altitudes of the attacking bombers, and needed a far smaller warhead to destroy these, it could be much smaller than the V2, about 1/4 the size.