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AtlasBarfed 7 months ago

If a couple squadrons of modern NATO aircraft were employed, It would mean total air superiority, All Russian tanks Artillery antiaircraft and apcs destroyed within a week, absolutely no supplies going to the troops on the ground.

ranger207 7 months ago | parent [-]

I'm a strong supporter of giving more material to Ukraine, but unfortunately a couple squadrons wouldn't make much of a dent. For air supremacy where you can do whatever you want in the air, you need to destroy enemy air defenses; even if you don't have complete air supremacy you need to create localized air supremacy to do missions. SEAD and DEAD (suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses, respectively) is extremely difficult and there's really one one country that has the means and requirement to do so, the US. Currently most aircraft in Ukraine on both sides are engaging in standoff attacks because getting anywhere near the front exposes you to massive amounts of air defenses. If the US could donate several squadrons, including specialized electronic warfare craft, and could train Ukrainian pilots on SEAD/DEAD then there'd be a chance to roll back Russian air defenses, but that's unlikely to happen even in the best case scenario. It's important to keep sending planes to Ukraine to prevent them from losing the air war, but I doubt there's anything that can be done for Ukraine to win the air war

AtlasBarfed 7 months ago | parent [-]

The squadrons I'm suggesting who would supply or contract would be modern us planes, which to your point are the ones would be necessary to gain complete destruction of air defenses.

The question was what weapon would significantly turn the tide.

So we are actually kind of in in agreement.