Yes, it's one thing to develop the industrial scale needed to field and effectively utilize aviation assets, it's another thing entirely to adapt and maintain t

Yes, it's one thing to develop the industrial scale needed to field and effectively utilize aviation assets, it's another thing entirely to adapt and maintain that base as long as the U.S. has been able to. Right now the U.S. has the institutional knowledge within the military, the industrial base to build craft, repair those craft, make custom tools/mods to those craft, well-trained and very experienced pilots, well-trained and very experienced aircrew, aircraft maintenance techs, etc. The latter means that the U.S. has a ready base of available personnel to use as expert instructors, as policy makers (in and out of the military), to feed back into the industrial base, etc. So it's not at all that other countries can't do it, but the investment needed to do so efficiently is just so massive nowadays.