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The US air force fought significant enemy air forces in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and in the Balkans. Their doctrine has not remained untested since 1945.
by cdot2 2y ago
The US air force fought significant enemy air forces in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and in the Balkans. Their doctrine has not remained untested since 1945.
- Prbeek 2y agoTake Vietnam for instance where the Soviets supplied the Vietcongs with AD systems and at times manned them The Americans lost over 10,000 aircrafts over a 10 year period which is an average of 3 per day. The US airforce cannot survive the attrition rate that a war with Russia or China would bring.
- elashri 2y agoFor completeness most of these losses were UAVs and Helicopters. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the...
- refurb 2y agoWhile 10,000 sounds like a lot, about 25% were accidents, and 75% in combat, so 7,500. That's 7,500 aircraft lost over 5.25 million sorties, or 14 lost per 1,000 sorties. The loss rate was 5 times higher in Korea and 25 times higher in WW2. And as the other comment mentioned, most were helicopters (5,600) and UAV's (1,000). Only 3,400 fixed wing, manned aircraft were lost.
- dylan604 2y agoAfter reading this, I thought the opening music for Top Gun was about to start playing
- pjc50 2y ago> The US airforce cannot survive the attrition rate that a war with Russia or China would bring. Nuclear exchange by ICBM would destroy most aircraft, their crews, their maintenance crews, and the factories for the replacement. There will be no dogfights.
- elashri 2y agoThe closest wars are the Iraqi and Balkans ware. For the first the vast majority of Iraq air force were destroyed on the ground or fled to neighboring countries, there were rarely any meaningful air to air fights. For Balkans, there were minimal air activities for Serbian air force. They were up against NATO (not only US) and all of the little opposition they had were using air defence systems which managed to down a couple of Nato air Jets. I wouldn't describe each of these two as significant in any meaningful way. Just to give example on scale. In Balkans, serbian air force had like a dozen modern air craft against ~ 1000 NATO aircrafts. One can say that the it was a little bit different in Korea and Vietnam but this was much closer to 1945 than nowadays.
- Spooky23 2y agoHuh? The US was essentially fighting the Soviets in Korea and Vietnam. It was a contentious, significant conflict. Vietnam in particular saw the cost of allowing the SAC/bomber mafia from dominating strategy. The Soviet and Vietnamese pilots were pretty badly mauling the US Air Force and Navy, whose armament and tactics were built around bomber interception.
- bluGill 2y agoKorea has been in cease fire since 1953. Vietnam ended in 1975. There has been a lot of changes since then. Not only have people studied and tried to learn lessons, but technology has changed significnatly. We have no clue how the current military would approach Vietnam or Korea if they happened today (both sides would be different!)
- elashri 2y agoRegarding these two wars my comment was exactly that. > One can say that the it was a little bit different in Korea and Vietnam but this was much closer to 1945 than nowadays. Korean war started almost five years after the end of WWII and Vietnam war is 50 years old now. The two wars in Balkans and Iraq is much relevant in experience compared to the earlier two. And while the soviets provided the Vietnamese with AAA and aircrafts, there were little soviets engagement in the actual fighting (regarding the air).