On the other hand, I see it from a different angle--I will never be a great fighter jock, but I am a pretty good tanker, jabo driver, and bomber, and I excel at tactics. The author points out that, to survive, the community needs to have a diverse skill (and value) set.
I disagree. Your position has a validity of its own, but it tends to impact what I (and some percentage of others) find enjoyable in the game. To me the attraction of these games is (and has been since 1993) to emulate, to some small virtual degree, the experiences of my heroes and villains from from the burining skies of WW2. Mainly fighter pilots. I like good strat games (logged more house this summer on CIV3 than AH), and were the strat model more complex, creating more opportunities for historical-type mission and requiring truly diverse gameplay to win the war then I might jump in with both feet. But I just can’t get into strat that revolves around steamroller tic-tac-toe.
Similarly, where “war winning” tactics are concerned there is something that is just too...sad... about dive bombing a CV with a flight of Lancs if you've spent 3/4 of your life reading about and being fascinated by WW2 air combat. However, as long as the "war" provides for an abundance of my style of good A2A action, then I don’t much care how anyone else plays the game. I will liklely even help out if an opportunity arises to intercept incoming bombers or the goon or kill a GV shelling the field, kill some drunks in their chutes -- I even deacked my first field last week.
Unfortunately, as has been pointed out before, winning the war and having good fights tend to contradict each other. That’s also where the path of least resistance comes in. To those AH war-winning bomber and fighter pilots and GV drivers who enjoy the challenge of the fight
However, you can win the war and do your part for the home chess piece very easily without having to know a high yo-yo from a lag turn. You can fly bombers in a non-historical manner and succeed without even having to calibrate the simple bombsight. You can shoot a plane on the runway, or with 10 of your friends, or after it's missing a wing and feel good - I got a kill! The war can be won with a comparative level of skill and knowledge that would embarrass a 1941 era Soviet flying cadet or a 1945 kamikaze pilot. It’s not an elitist thing -- I’m hardly elite -- so much as the fact that those of us who like a good fight, and have found communities of others who like a good fight for many years, find that focus diminishing.
I have no problem with a cherrypicker who fights, or those who fight but run when they get too far in the hole. I don't expect the Mustang to stall fight against my Ki-84. But it's got to the point where if I'm alone and a solo Mustang flies over me, I expect 1 half-assed pass, maybe two, and good by - if that. This is what I've seen change the most since about the Gamestorm era. With even a reasonable amount of skill and some agression that Mustang should have a 75% chance of blowing me out of the air. It should be something to be feared, but you can almost ignore a high jabo type today.
A game that represents the Ferrari of 3d WW2 air combat simulators gets used for it’s winning-the-war gameplay model, which putts along at Yugo/Lada levels. What ya gonna do 
Charon
