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.
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.
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.
> 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).
The US airforce cannot survive the attrition rate that a war with Russia or China would bring.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the...
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.
Nuclear exchange by ICBM would destroy most aircraft, their crews, their maintenance crews, and the factories for the replacement. There will be no dogfights.