During the Gulf War, our planes were close to the operations. Most of our planes flew from Saudi airfields, from other neighboring nations, or from carriers. We had F-117As for the trips to downtown, F-111s and F-15Es to go after deep targets, F-16s and A-10s to go after tanks and the troops, etc.

Afghanistan is landlocked and we don't have many nearby bases, so planes have to fly much further to reach their targets. The situation would be different if a neighboring nation like Pakistan allowed us to fly combat missions from their airfields but that isn't the case.

There's also the matter of targets. Even with that relatively low number of aircraft, there are reports that planes frequently return to their carriers still carrying their weapons load. The pilots are having a hard time finding good targets to attack. Iraq was a target rich environment, especially compared to Afghanistan. Most of the worthwhile targets were destroyed in Afghanistan long ago.