War Planes

Every Sunday the F18's roar by us on the golf course. The noise is deafening. We stop in the middle of the backswing, and stare upward in awe. It's a dramatic sight. They seem gone before we can even take it all in. Next Sunday, they are back again.
Our golfing companions wait patiently for us to continue the game - "Oh, they come by every Sunday. It's fun".
We do some research. F18 veteran pilots need to keep up-to-date with their flying skills because the US military wants to have them available if need be. So they leave from a military airport, land at a smaller one, and take off again - enough so that that they keep familiar with any changes in the machines. It seems like an efficient plan .
But there's something here that doesn't seem to make sense. Here we are in a war against terrorists. People who are blowing up varying amounts of other people all over the place. It's a small scale type of activity that can't be stopped by a huge war plane. Terrorists make roadside bombs for $1.98 that kill a lot of people, while a $90 million dollar F18 flies by overhead. A war plane is for a war with one army against another, one country against another. With lots of chances to do damage with bombs. A terrorist war doesn't work that way. We don't know who, or what, or where the enemy is. One terrorist doesn't seem to know what the other terrorist is doing. They don't even know each other's names. This is the power of the movement. An F18? A thousand of these planes wouldn't make one bit of difference to this war. The very word "fighter plane" seems out of date. It's puzzling.