The concept was resurrected in no small part due to the budget wars playing out at the end of the Eisenhower administration and the transition to Kennedy and his "flexible response" ideas. In particular they were trying to fend off an emphasis on conventional conflict (and special operations) that might cut into their bomber funding (and the rise of helicopters within the Army drove their thinking as well, but that's a different story in some ways). Fuchs is correct that something superficially similar did take place in Afghanistan. As for testing at the time, the Air Force claimed that some small-scale deployments in the late 1950s and early 1960s "validated the concept," but the only battlefield testing I'm aware of would have taken place in Laos. And even then it wasn't the same thing.
And Bob, they didn't invest in the platforms to fight that kind of war back then, let alone now.
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