That's because many countries had "fly high" aircraft with "dumb" weapons.
Dropping hundreds of bombs in the general area of a bridge from some crazy height only wasted most of them. You'd be lucky if one scored a really good hit.
Only when smart weapons came on the scene did the fly high stuff become more bang-for-the-buck.
"Fly high" aircrafts like 4th gen Mig29s needs "educational" background like Indian pilots.
The others can only be settled with "fly low" aircrafts like Mig21, we claim

