Or maybe the lesson to learn is that modern military aircraft are simply not particularly useful weapons. Fighters are way too expensive relative to the cost of ground-based AA systems, while a combination of missile and shell-based artillery can do most bombing jobs way cheaper.

In general modern military seems to be focused on delivering as much power as possible in a single unit, never bothering to ask if multiple lesser units could do a better job combined. And so we get destroyers and cruisers that look mighty, but can nevertheless be rendered inoperable, if not outright sunk, by a single torpedo.