Our doctrine was built around aircraft, suppression of enemy air defenses, and then domination through missiles and total air superiority. We flew more combat sorties on Day 1 of Desert Storm than both of these nations have flown in two years of this conflict. Soviet (and by extension both of these nations) doctrine places emphasis on overwhelming manpower, artillery, and air defense.
We have an order of magnitude more combat aircraft of all classes than both of these nations combined. We have more AH-64s that are allocated just to training than both of these nations have helicopters in active service combined.
Ukraine is already giving Russia's AD systems a run for their money using our hand-me-downs from 30 or more years ago. Their aircraft have no stealth technology, ancient avionics, ancient targeting systems, last-generation anti-radiation missiles.
Russian AD systems stand zero chance against modern SEAD doctrine: we can see this in effect every time Ukraine uses decoy-based saturation attacks combined with cruise missiles. They simply do not have enough capable batteries to sustain a meaningful air defense when faced with a financially-superior adversary. We have tens of thousands of AGM-88 HARMs in stock: Russia has less than 2000 estimated S-300/S-400 acquisition radars.
Nuclear weapons are Russia's only real military trump card; Russia would cease to exist if confined to conventional munitions in a "peer" conflict. There exists exactly zero chance we end up in a Ukraine style meat grinder, we're deploying nuclear weapons long before that happens.
Also: Ukraine isn't engaged in total war and has no ability to wage it. The United States would (and has in past conflicts) engage in strategic bombing campaigns on absolutely every single manufacturing facility, every supply chain, in every complicit nation. In a US-Russia or US-China conflict, Iran doesn't get to sell drones or any other munitions without receiving 40 tons of JDAMs on their manufacturing facilities.
> The United States would (and has in past conflicts) engage in strategic bombing campaigns on absolutely every single manufacturing facility, every supply chain, in every complicit nation. In a US-Russia or US-China conflict, Iran doesn't get to sell drones or any other munitions without receiving 40 tons of JDAMs on their manufacturing facilities.
It depends on which country it is and how many of them there are. China and the Soviet Union were both helping Vietnam, for example.
Note that heavy industry can be very resilient against bombing; during WW2, the allies dropped over 30 kilotons of conventional bombs on and around the german Leunawerke, which were still running at double digit percentage efficiency; modern targetting and improved explosives would obviously help, but disabling manufacturing by bombs is not as trivial as one might assume!
TL;DR 40 tons of JDAMs are not enough to achieve anything lasting.
Perhaps, but are they as effective as laser guided arms we had even in Iraq?
I can still remember watching original video of a laser guided bomb/missle hitting the exact right spot to get to the depths of the target to later cause massive damage.
Russia is not Iraq. There's no equivalent of Saudi Arabia next to Russia to launch the initial attacks from. A large portion of Russia's military industrial complex is far inland, the only weapons that have a long enough flight path are nuclear capable and Russia would immediately send out nukes.
How many days on station do you think an Aircraft carrier would make it in the baltic before it's torpedoed to the bottom of the sea?
We have an order of magnitude more combat aircraft of all classes than both of these nations combined. We have more AH-64s that are allocated just to training than both of these nations have helicopters in active service combined.
Ukraine is already giving Russia's AD systems a run for their money using our hand-me-downs from 30 or more years ago. Their aircraft have no stealth technology, ancient avionics, ancient targeting systems, last-generation anti-radiation missiles.
Russian AD systems stand zero chance against modern SEAD doctrine: we can see this in effect every time Ukraine uses decoy-based saturation attacks combined with cruise missiles. They simply do not have enough capable batteries to sustain a meaningful air defense when faced with a financially-superior adversary. We have tens of thousands of AGM-88 HARMs in stock: Russia has less than 2000 estimated S-300/S-400 acquisition radars.
Nuclear weapons are Russia's only real military trump card; Russia would cease to exist if confined to conventional munitions in a "peer" conflict. There exists exactly zero chance we end up in a Ukraine style meat grinder, we're deploying nuclear weapons long before that happens.
Also: Ukraine isn't engaged in total war and has no ability to wage it. The United States would (and has in past conflicts) engage in strategic bombing campaigns on absolutely every single manufacturing facility, every supply chain, in every complicit nation. In a US-Russia or US-China conflict, Iran doesn't get to sell drones or any other munitions without receiving 40 tons of JDAMs on their manufacturing facilities.