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In Desert Storm, about 75-80% of all Iraqi equipment was destroyed by ground forces, largely the Abrams and Bradley battalions. One Iraqi tank commander was interviewed after the fighting and said that he had started with 38 T-72 MBTs. After 3 weeks of bombing, he had over 30 left. 20 minutes after engaging an M1 Abrams unit, he had no tanks left.
What has changed the air war, and particularly ground support, forever, is the development of GPS-guided precision weapons that can be dropped at night, through smoke, fog, clouds, etc. Close air support now can be a B-52 or B-2 orbiting at 30,000 ft waiting for orders for weapons delivery. We finally have bombs that can hit targets accurately in any weather, and that is recent in the history of modern warfare. Of course, that doesn't stop you from dropping bombs on innocent civilians if your intel is wrong or someone programmed the wrong coordinates into his GPS.....
Its truly amazing that in 50years we gone from High alt drops with Norden to a simple dial a switch with GPS
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