I’m fairly a fairly-knowledge and well-studied student of military history and a war veteran myself, but I am not omniscient.
This is a legitimate question:
I cannot think of a single conventional major military campaign between two conventional militaries (not talking about guerrilla warfare) from the beginning of WWII until February 24, 2022 where one side did not achieve air supremacy.
Is that not correct?
And furthermore, I cannot think of one example of conventional-to-conventional where the side with air supremacy lost?
That is what makes this seem like such an aberration, but also consistent with the above.
Neither side has air supremacy (as opposed to some modest air superiority), and … it is a stalemate. Unsurprising to me.
Say what you want, but, aside from all that, Russia’s inability to dominate the skies over Ukraine suggests to me that we could put scores of F22s, F35s, and B-2s over Moscow or any battleground NATO may have with Russia. That, plus the reality that Russia has an economy the size of Texas’s economy, aside from the NATO allies, suggests that a conventional war between Russia and NATO would end poorly for Russia.
But Russia has nukes. Whether they are spending the massive amounts of money to maintain those as functional, rather than just a perceived deterrent, is curious to me.
I asked my father this question some years ago. He was a nuclear scientist in NM. All he said was: "If I knew, I could not tell you."
It might help to not assign western military doctrine with Russian doctrine.
Russia is accomplishing what they want, (annexing eastern Ukraine, destruction of Ukraine as a military threat), without exposing too much of their air power.
While western (read: US) doctrine is shock and awe, start have we accomplished with that? Iraq is a mess, Afghanistan is a now well-armed mess, NATO is having to rearm at great expense, the US is adding two more countries that we are now responsible for defending and funding. Western economies are falling.
Of course, if you want, you can buy into the propaganda that everything's fine. Ol toot/tdoyka will supply the info.
Unfortunately for Ukrainians, they weren't watching their government close enough and they allowed the CIA and people like Nuland in. Now they are paying the price.
