The rotary wing US lost close to 10,000, I don’t even count them into the previous number. 3,200 are fixed wing between USAF and USN, mostly Phantom jets.
On what Russia is closing I don’t get, you don’t make any point.
You still failed to address my point regarding modern SAMs. Who said that your plans are going to work? Petraeus and Hodges are on record saying how much a sweeping success Azov “counter-offensive” is going to be. You know, “Western-trained, western-equipped, highly motivated, using proper tactics” against “ poorly armed, poorly led”. The operation was fully planned in Pentagon and performed on scale the US military never dared to do itself since Korea. Would you explain me why thunder runs didn’t work?
I stand corrected looking deeper into the numbers , but yours are wrong as well
The original source I pulled up had a ridiculously low number of rotary which is why I said Russia was closing in on those lose numbers,
More looking shows around 10000 total almost 4000 aircraft and almost 6000 helicopters
But as you know those loses are much more nuanced, from what I can find less than 300 were lost to sams, and many of the aircraft were lost to accidents
Additionally most aircraft were low and slow close air support prop planes, and the helicopters were in armored helicopters.
That was a different time with different aircraft and systems so the comparison is actually pretty difficult to make but would agree it was bad.
Interesting that those loses went down when Nixon got rid of terrible Rules of engagement, allowed bombing of sams sites(manned by Russians by many accounts), bombed Hanoi and mined and attacked the harbor there.
Much was said of ho chi min trail for supplies, but the major supplier of weapons was Soviet Union through the harbor and for many years there was a fear that killing Russians there would lead to WW3. Fact is after Soviet ships were hit the result was strongly worded letter from them.
Interesting topic but not really relevant a bit like talking German loses during ww2
If as you say russia has air supremacy why have Russian aircraft not ventured over Ukrainian air space and ka-52 fleet suffered 30-50% loses.
Your point I think I am inferring is that a NATO led air Champaign would be a slaughter I will disagree with
As to thunder runs…, I am a follower of Hodges and his comments and don’t recall him saying anything like that in fact quite the opposite
Russian defense plans and mostly extensive minefields were and are a major problem. Kharkiv was a success primarily because russia had no prepared defenses, and though many predicted a repeat of Kharkiv, without sufficient airpower to quickly eliminate threats primarily from russian artillery attacking forces trying to negotiate the minefields the advance was going to have to be slow, attritional, and methodical.
That is bearing fruit now, russian forces have been severely attrited esp artillery, air defense and logistical support
Russian lines of defense have been crossed and the question remains what do the Russians have to man those remaining built defense lines.
Time will tell, but mobilizing an additional 500000 indicates things are not going as planned
Will the russian forces crack like In Kharkiv or do a massive withdrawal as in kherson is yet to be determined.
The observation I will make is that this russian “SMO” against a relatively small Ukrainian force with also relatively small amount of western supplies weapons as compared to the full force of a NATO response to a russian invasion does not give a good look to Russian capacities and capabilities
Again we will see