Every Airforce in the world has the same responsibilities. The difference is that our military/industrial complex is so powerful, it makes us believe that we have some divine responsibilities, for which, of course we have to spend billions of dollars buying stuff that they sell. Worst of all, we don't even have money to buy stuff, so we print the money.
F-35 is fine airplane and i like it. But I sure can not believe that we are going to spend money that we don't have to buy 2400 of it!? Yet, just few months ago, just before Christmas, we cut unemployment benefits to millions of unemployed workers ...
Talking about A-10, it is time to retire that thing. Read the A-10's over Kosovo and you will see why.