Which works perfectly well fighting a #shitholeCountry, as I've already mentioned.
You cannot fight a war of attrition against somebody who has plenty of equipment, and resources and is determined to fight despite suffering massive losses.
You just need to use totally different tactics like mixing up modern and expensive equipment with less expensive ones.
The Americans planned to acquire solely stealth fighters, but they concluded it was too expensive.
A better idea is to destroy, or heavily harm the enemy air force with stealth fighters and do massive harm to its air defence and carry on attacks with conventional planes afterwards.
About 2,500 F-35s will be purchased and the total number of active AF and ANG fighter aircraft at any point in the 21st century has been 1,300-2,000. The US wants to add copilot aircraft to increase carrying capacity and survivability in high threat environments for their 6th generation aircraft. Not sure if some current aircraft will be getting the capability to use these as well in an update.
But it's not instead of stealth fighters, but in addition to it.
Are British Challenger 2s, German Leopard 2A6s, Polish Krabs, etc. scrap bits and bobs?
As I said bit and bobs. "
bits and bobs. noun miscellaneous small articles".
The US operates ~2,000 Abrams tanks. So yeah, a dozen or two of Abrams, Leopard etc are bits and bobs. When you go up against the US army you get to experience being on the receiving end of it's full armoured fist, not a few dozen export hand-me-downs. Ukraine could have been in a much better position if it had been given more support post 2014, even if it was just money or technology to upgrade things (like their T-64s), keep more in active service etc.
What naval blockade can work against RuZZia? Whatever the Orcs don't have, they can import it from #ChinaVirusDevelopers.
A naval blockade would just stop RuZZia from exporting goods to South America and make exports to Africa more difficult.
Blocking exports means less income and less import (sources). The Chinese are going to want
something in return for their support.
Is it what our military planners thought when they decided to stay in Afghanistan? Did our smaller losses make us win the war in Afghanistan? Did they make the Americans win the war in Vietnam?
Your way of thinking just reminds me of your prediction about the success of the Ukrainian "offensive" in Zaporozhiya in 2023, while I said it would fail well before it started. Your optimism here is exactly the same.
They also obliterated the Vietnamese. Does it mean they won the Vietnam War?
Has the Saudi modern equipment made Saudi Arabia win the civil war in Yemen?
Yes, that's true, but what do you define as the "victory"? If Ukraine was able to liberate all its territories that were lost past 2014, do you really believe it would make RuZZia sign a peace agreement and stop fighting? You are out of the touch with reality.
This war isn't an anti-insurgency operation like Vietnam, Jemen or Afghanistan, it's a traditional war for territory. If russia got pushed out of Ukraine in 2022 they could still fire into it, but it's opportunities to attack Ukraine would have been far more limited. The main issue is that Ukraine cannot fight to it's full potential because a significant portion of it's territory has been occupied for years, it cannot make money as easily. With russia pushed out any Ukrainian fire lands on russian territory = bad domestic PR for Putler. More targets within range of Ukrainian fires and less within range of russian ones.
There was no Zaporozhiya offensive except on paper, there was a single day of probing until someone in the hierarchy pulled the plug and moved troops so they could be ground down by the russians around Bakhmut. There was only one area where they could conceivably attack without major issues (not enough naval assets to attack out of Kherson, going north east would expose both flanks and attacking into russia wasn't allowed by the US). Even if Zaporozhiya was the obvious target the defenses there were less dense than they were in Donbas so it was the logical thing to do. You seem to believe that Ukraine simply putting everything into defending static lines is the only way to go, well that way you just get eroded faster because russia can bring down every bit of firepower that they can muster on those concentrations. Even in a defensive posture you still need to go forward at times. Simply digging in and being inactive to "preserve" forces doesn't work. You'd be fighting blind and surrendering all initiative to the enemy.
And again we come back to my point that the Ukrainians got bits and bobs to carry out that operation, delivered over the course of many months and after many refusals and politicians sh*tting their pants as usual. If Ukraine had been better supported since 2014 they wouldn't have need to wait and could have attacked much sooner after Kherson was retaken when the defenses were far less extensive. Russia and Ukraine started out with fairly similar force levels. Better trained and equipped they would have contained the russian attack even more than they ended up doing.
It does not matter. The Orcs have learned how to jam the GPS signal and made a lot of Western weapons ineffective. They don't have enough jamming devices to jam it everywhere and that's why some GMLRS and Excalibur attacks are still effective.
Which is why I mentioned INS. There's no blocking that. ~10-20m for a 500lbs bomb still means you're f*cked. Same idea as the glide bombs.
