Because there wasn't a declared war. You're discussing a scenario completely different from mine. 
The trend has been away from the no-fly zone and games of chicken in the west because aircraft are too expensive to be risked like that, and the same expense means that things are very different from on the ground where there are many spurious targets that shouldn't be killed. It's much easier to keep tabs on and sort aircraft. Dogfighting will still be necessary, certainly, but as aircraft grow fewer in number and more expensive, closing to the merge is less and less attractive.
Sorry, I was out in an internet cafe in the middle of the most bogan suburb in Perth when my 15 minutes ran out...twice.
Okay, fair enough. And I agree, with most forces downsizing these days (check Britain, as has been mentioned), it's really the case.
The wildcard in all of this is that there has not been a 5th gen fighter engagement ever. The introduction of helmet mounted sights, thrust vectored missiles alone could help rewrite some of the books on dogfighting. It used to be about putting the enemy in front of you but if an off aspect angle kill is possible and reliably possible then the launching aircraft needs only be agile enough to make that angle possible. Doesn't mean you can fly freight train around with AIM-9Xs hanging off of it but it does mean that you don't necessarily have to maneuver quite so much.
I dunno, I won't buy it until I see it. If flares can't defeat Sidewinders or ASRAAMs, that will mean ECM manufacturers will have to step up to the plate. And the only sure fire way to get the kill, is from 6 o'clock. I don't see that changing, even with thrust vectoring missiles and such; if you fire a missile at a ninety degree angle, the missile still has to turn to get a lead on the aircraft, expending time and fuel in doing so, which may mean the difference between a pilot being able to pull the aircraft into a position where he can deploy countermeasures or bring himself into a position to engage the firing platform.
And the most common 'dogfight missile' among western countries is, and I believe will continue to be for a while, the Sidewinder, which doesn't possess thrust vectoring.
I'm probably a bit of a cynic on this matter, but until planes shoot each other out of the sky with ****ing laser beams fired from fifty million miles away that can burn a hole through the canopy and into the back of the pilot's skull effortlessly, I seriously doubt the dogfight is going to completely fade.
Especially when we live in a world where events like the Gulf of Sidra are likely to happen over areas such as the South China Sea, rather than official declarations of war.
