I just can't resist pointing out perhaps the supreme irony of Cordesman's statement, which is that even if a "Western" style army were to just have infantry, I can't imagine that they wouldn't be backed up by high-tech ground attack aircraft. So the most cost-effective arm, the infantry, is (in such a scenario) married to the least cost-effective weapon, the modern fighter-bomber (in terms of impact on the ground). It's not that fighter-bombers aren't effective, it is that they are tremendously expensive, bloating severely the ratio of cost to effectiveness.

Yes, there are missions that an F-22 can perform better than any other platform. However, UAV's can now be deployed to even the small unit level, and there are plenty of fire support requirements that can be fulfilled by artillery - is an SDB really that much better than an Excalibur shell? Especially considering that a howitzer and crew is, quite literally, several orders of magnitude less expensive than a plane that may cost 100 or 200 million, with a pilot that costs millions to train, and then millions to keep trained, every year, a ground crew and support that can consist of a dozen personnel for each aircraft, and costs millions more to deploy and support in theater. I'm not advocating the dissolution of the Air Force, but for support of ground troops, artillery is just as capable in many (not all) scenarios, and much, much cheaper.

Yet, for some reason, some military analysts are in love with the idea of doing away with tanks and artillery completely... it's amazing that someone who is supposedly read-up history is then surprised when having a platoon of tanks to back up a infantry battalion in a fight, urban or otherwise, turns out to be very good idea. Just how many times do we need to relearn that one?