I mean, we own the airspace over the entire country! I would think that every convoy would have air and armour looking out for and protecting it.
Two guys or three are not best dealt with by air support. We'd lose more of our own to short or over close rounds, and in crashes- remember that for every hour flown, a helo requires a minimum of ten hours of maintenance, and we don't need crashes of aircraft due to either maintenance shortcomings or overextended hours for those busy maintenance crews.
Neither are tanks always the answer, and neither do we want to give a few teenaged shooters the moral and propaganda victory of making us hide inside 60-ton armored vehicles, when for the last decades Saddam's gestapo routinely toured the countryside in sopftskinned civilian vehicles as they went about their nastiness. As equipment for response teams when it's very much more than just a couyple of shooters with AKs and an RPG or two, yes, heavier equipment is valuable and needed, just as air suport and medevac capabilities are. But as a routine part of every supply convoy and mail clerk's run, nope, that's an overdependence on equipment when the problem is of another character.
Our Marine's junior officers and NCOs are not without a considerable body of personal and institutional professional knowledge about small unit operations in such conditions, and my tendency is not to teach the Marines their business nor to criticize their way of taking care of business from 12,000 miles away. But there might be a detail or two about which I could offer them a helpful hint or two should I notice such glaringly absent in their conduct of operations, and if I* do, I'll pass it along to them the most effective way I know how...which can be particularly responsive and effective.
-archy-/-