Lot of grafting

The plan they are working on was clearly never intended to be used like this. US military planners know full well that airstrikes only cannot achieve regime change. The original plan certainly called for a follow up ground invasion and occupation, similar to the Iraq war. Some genius must have decided that they could just chop off that part of the plan and get all of the benefits with none of the risk.

Wars are won with logistics and strategy, both incompetent here.

There are some really good responses if you search “US military doctrine” or just “military doctrine” with “only comments” checked.

The TLDR is that the us military isn’t this expensive or structured this way because it’s good for the US. Its this way because it’s good for the military industrial consultant industry, and by and large, US military doctrine is captured by this industry. Over decades,they selected for systems and manners of thinking which were profitable and supportive of them; not of US citizens or the world at large, or anyone but themselves really.

The US military isn’t built to be a good fighting force. Its built to be an expensive, very dependent on very expensive people and things fighting force. And sometimes those two things overlap. But anyone even moderately versed in military doctrine knows this already; that there are some very structural rules which determines who wins and loses. Its much more boring than F35s and reaper drones.