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1 - Yes, the USAF started as part of the Army. My Dad flew P-47s and P-51s for the Army Air Corps. Notice that even then they had started to pull airpower out of control of the local commander. Indeed, it was one of the lessons of WW2 that the USAF needed to be created.

2 - I say they are clueless because I’ve done a lot of coordinating with them. Very few Army officers comprehend the flexibility and maneuverability of airpower. I’ve had BN/CCs insist that aircraft need to stay directly overhead their BN for 8 hours - which is not only impossible, but would prevent the aircraft from responding to TICs in the TF 40 miles away. That is at the tactical level. Don’t even start on higher level uses, such as JSTARS, RJ, bombers, etc.

3 - Fast moving aircraft USED to suck at CAS. That was true when I was at NTC in the early 90s. However, since then the USAF has spent a ton of money on “targeting pods”, and weapons that can be dropped with great precision from 30,000 feet. The Litening and Sniper pods, and systems such as ROVER, make it possible in many cases to attack MORE accurately from 30K than from 500 feet.

Also, that speed allows a single aircraft to support 4 units at one time. How? Well, at least in Afghanistan, the enemy doesn’t have coordinated attacks across several hundred miles of space. Heck, OUR Army doesn’t seem to do much coordinated movement between adjacent battalions. Speed is what allows an aircraft that just supported a TIC west of Jalalabad to move and support a new TIC near Naray.

And again - there are many valuable roles filled by aircraft NOT tasked to supporting specific ground units.

I also spent about a year working on the A-10 PE program, which has successfully competed for USAF money to upgrade the A-10. But if you think an F-16 can’t do an awesome job of CAS, you are wrong. I’ve watched them (and F-15Es) do it.

4 - Yes, I said CAS was a terrible way to employ airpower. When you employ aircraft in CAS, it is a force additive...killing what is in range of the Army units to kill. That is fine when the Army is on the defensive. On offense, airpower becomes a force MULTIPLIER when you attack the NEXT echelon or beyond. You confuse direct support at the lowest tactical level for the ONLY way to support national objectives. Most of USAF efforts support the Army, but out of sight of the Army units. The 6 weeks of bombing prior to the GW1 invasion of Iraq were extremely valuable to the Army, as was the bombing that took place during GW2’s so called lull.

5 - Army officers can say where they want strikes. However, they often don’t get it - not because the USAF doesn’t care, but because there is greater need for a limited resource elsewhere. In many cases, such as the lull, the USAF is working strikes that will be more useful to the USA than what the local ground commander knows about. That is why putting the USAF under the thumb of a BN or BDE/CC is stupid. The USFK/CC got to approve the USAFK plan - but the experts of the Air Force built the plan (to the USFK/CC’s intent) and then explained it in exhaustive detail to him. There isn’t time to do that to every ground CC out there.

6 - The Marines rely on the USAF for strategic air, for RJs, AWACS, etc. They rely on the interdiction efforts of the USAF, and the deep bombing to interrupt the enemy’s C2. Those are valuable roles, which the Marines can not and do not fill.

7 - Apart from my own role planning and coordinating air, I have a vested interest in ground troops getting support - I’ve got a son in the Army and a daughter who used to be in the Marines. But there is no way that would happen properly if the USAF was moved back under the Army. We had this discussion in WW2 - lets not unlearn the lessons of the last 100 years!