“The Air Force pilots are the ones that don’t want even sand scratches on their pretty planes. ... The Navy pilots, particularly the Marines, will come get you out of trouble no matter what is going on.
That seems to be the view from the ground.”
This is true only from the worm’s-eye view of someone stuck on the ground.
Infantry is not the “final answer.” Truth be told, ground troops contribute less to the fight in terms of lives risked, munitions carried, and enemy forces negated, compared to any other “system.”
It was not even true 240 years ago: during the American War of Independence, the Continental Army did not beat the British toe-to-toe, man-to-man; it simply avoided one disaster after another until the French intervened, using their own sea power to block Britain’s Royal Navy from supporting Charles, Lord Cornwallis.
Military endeavor has advanced somewhat beyond the individual footsolider so beloved of the American public.
Ya can’t “occupy” from the air. You can’t see what is in the hidy-holes unless you walk into them. So on...
Infantry still determines who wins, from Vietnam to Afghanistan/Iraq. It might not have to be American infantry, but whoever has “boots on the ground” owns it.
Even without the French/Spanish navies during the Revolution, Britain still had to fight this war from an ocean away; it simply couldn’t be done as long as the colonists could live independently of them (and they could - I’ve seen the ruins of hidden furnaces and forges where colonists illegally produced their own goods prior to the Revolution).