Is CAS dead?

I read through the “FC-1” thread, and it brought me to a question which hoovers around in my mind since quite a long time: is close-air-support mission – at least as we knew it until now – “dead”?

I’ll explain a bit why I got this feeling. In 1973 the IDF/AF gave its best in CAS, bombing Syrian and Egyptian troops all the places it could find them. It suffered staggering losses in exchange for not special results. The same happened to Arabs: hundreds of CAS missions, which were hardly felt by Israelis, in exchange for extreeme losses to Israeli interceptors, SAMs and flaks. Afterward, there were accusations on both sides, that the air force shouldn’t do something, which is actually a job of ground forces and their artillery. Additionally, both the IDF/AF and SyAF purchased combat helicopters, and these flew 50% of CAS missions during the war in 1982. In both wars, however, interdiction strikes and SEAD were far more decisive than CAS.

In 1991 Coallition Air Forces flew some CAS, but the heavyweight was already on interdiction against targets deep in Iraq. In 1995, when NATO bombed Serbs in Bosnia, there were no CAS sorites at all, instead, even the artillery of the RRF was engaged often enough. In 1999, again no CAS, even if quite a number of search-and-destroy missions was flown in order to hunt down Serbian ground units. Results were very mixed. In all other air wars meanwhile, any air force which flew CAS missions, suffered considerable losses to modern flaks, SAMs and MANPADs, and armed helicopters take over an increasing number of CAS tasks. However, their vulnerability prevented the USA even to use AH-64s over Kosovo, two years ago. Even IAF’s ops over Kargil looked rather like interdiction than CAS, and foremost interdiction weapons were deployed.

The next generation of modern aircraft are all air superiority or interdiction strikers, and even their weapons – while partialy based on those usefull for CAS – are developing into interdiction weapons (i.e. EU500, Mk.82/83/84 bombs are used as warheads for LGBs and GPSGBs). At the same time, even light-SAM systems, capable of being deployed along front sectors, are such high-tech and so “dangerous”, that one almost gets a feeling, that it would be better if nothing comes their way.

Thus my question: will in potential conflicts in the near future (next 10-15 years) the CAS be flown at all, and if yes, when, under which circumstances, by what?