Sure, fighters, bombers and drone work excellently when your adversaries have few if any functional modern aircraft, or when their ground defenses are so vulner

Sure, fighters, bombers and drone work excellently when your adversaries have few if any functional modern aircraft, or when their ground defenses are so vulnerable and/or disorganized that (often risky) strikes can take them out. However, there is more than one type of adversary. It is important to control the air, or the adversary will be able to deny the air and probably the ground and/or sea to you. In that sense, whatever is playing a huge offensive role very likely depends on air superiority. RAND runs studies on the effectiveness of the (quickly aging) US fighter fleet. There are quite a few of these out there and generally the conclusion is that US aircraft like F16s (cheap multirole fighter) and F15s (fighter/bomber or air superiority fighter) designed (and sometimes even built) in the 70s and 80s, even when equipped with modern electronics, don't have a clear advantage (assuming they don't fall apart on the way to the battle - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f156nov06,0,7052818.story#axzz2jjwv2XGO http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f156nov...).