Originally Posted by
Panthertamer79
The USAF’s primary concern in future, near-peer conflict (ie the worst case scenario short of a nuke exchange) is winning the Counterair fight. Counterland missions like CAS and Interdiction don’t happen unless you can gain and maintain some semblance of air superiority (at least locally and temporarily). I’m not saying that CAS isn’t an important mission or that the USAF shouldn’t invest in it, but it doesn’t mean much if you can’t dominate your primary reason for existing (fly, fight, and win the air domain anywhere on the planet).
USAF of course has their parochial interests. But they're also doctrinally responsible for providing the joint enterprise with support from the air domain, and CAS is one of those. Fair to say they've been striving for a Gentlemen's C- on that.
But counterair will reasonably be more important than CAS in the obvious PRC scenarios. Unless things go horribly wrong and really drag out...