“Back to the past? The Air Force was separated from the Army because Army commanders always wanted first priority use of airpower in their own geographical area. Any strategic use of airpower, such as bombing Iraq and Afghanistan from bases in the CONUS, requires that it be a separate service with its own chain of command. The same is true of long-range airlift and air refueling and air rescue.”
That brings up an interesting question...since strategic airpower was the Raison d ‘Etre for the independence of the Air Force in the first place, and since tactical air ops are mostly for the theater, why not simply give tacair back to the Army (as well as the transport mission), and leave long range bombers and ICBM’s to an independant USAF? The argument was that USAF really doesn’t want the ground support mission anyway. Why not simply divest them of it then? The Army has suggested this in the past, asking for A-10’s, but USAF always got into a pissing match about territory...fixed wing mine and mine only...you get rotorcraft, grunt.
Tacair is more than close air support. It includes air superiority and interdiction and theater airlift, to name a few.
Close air support is advancing rapidly through the use of armed UAVs, locally launched and controlled by the Army, and I’m all for that, but they still need fast-movers on station from bases far away, beyond the local Army commander’s turf.