Now here is a current affairs topic with DIRECT relevance to tabletop gaming!
One aspect of modern war that has always bothered me in the context of tactical-level (company/platoon) tabletop wargaming is off-board arty and air support.
Let's say you have a reinforced platoon or rifle company in contact. Its side has air supremacy or superiority and it calls in arty or, better yet, air support maybe in the form of multiple A-10s or an AC-130.
If the OpFor consists of vehicles without adequate air defenses then in most cases it's game over at the tactical level. The air support will smoke the OpFor vehicles before they get anywhere near the friendly ground forces. Then the ground troops march over to the remaining shell shocked defenders to clear them out.
When you add heavy arty into the mix in a free-fire zone context things get even less tactically interesting from a gaming perspective. Move to contact, ID targets for the 155s, and unleash hell.
Re: Tango's post, it's interesting that the allied/coalition forces think that this air campaign will be effective.
How will it ID targets on the ground? If an unrestrained strategic bombing campaign what will be the effect on innocent civilian lives and infrastructure? What ground troops will ultimately march into ISIS strongholds and clean them out?
So for wargamers you have two extremes.
On the one hand, in a tactical fight heavy arty and air support can not only unbalance a game it can completely ruin a game's competitive entertainment value ("Here's your deployment zone, your troops will now be subjected to 20 minutes of heavy arty and if they try to move there's an AC-130 and a flight of Warthogs with something to say about that").
On the other hand air support without ground forces has proven ineffective in ultimately taking control of the battle space. Air and arty can destroy obvious concentrations of troops in the open but only infantry can move into sensitive areas where troops are mixed with civilians and their critical infrastructure and take control.
This was true even in the total war context of WWII. German didn't surrender until enemy boots were walking over their capitol city despite having been bombed into rubble. Japan weathered massive fire bombing campaigns and didn't surrender until faced with the existential threat of nuclear annihilation.
Our solution when playing and designing games has been to limit air and arty to perhaps unrealistically lower levels of support. But we do include them because they are fun to use (I love ground attack aircraft like the Su-25!) and they can, in limited amounts, make tactical gaming more interesting. For example if an opponent is "camping" and making it nearly impossible for conventional ground forces to advance then air and arty can at least suppress the defenders/campers enough to allow an attack to get started.
The key for gaming entertainment value is to make air and arty just effective enough to SUPPORT the ground troops during an attack and not so powerful that they make the ground troops superfluous and needed only to clean out the shell-shocked enemy defenders. Ideally air and arty soften up defenders just enough to allow an attack to get started but the attacking ground forces will still need to finish the job and will need to do so against defenders with some fight left in them! :-)
EDIT:
Here's a book on modern air arty support that I highly recommend: "Level Zero Heroes".
levelzeroheroes.com
It illustrates extremely well both the power and limits of air and arty support. The most powerful weapon in the light infantryman's arsenal is his radio when he has access to modern air and arty support. In several fights described in the book the arrival of air/arty decisively changed the course of battle. At the same time such power, if used without consideration for its impact on civilians, can also lose a war while winning individual battles. Great book!