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Comment by Xixi | Hacker News Reader

Just two days ago: "F-35 Had To Maneuver To Evade Houthi Surface-To-Air Missile", "Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses" [1]

They also shot down seven MQ-9 drones [2].

I don't know how close Houthis were to actually shoot down that F-35 (probably not that close). But if their Iranian SAMs can threaten F-35s, what can state of the art Chinese or Russian systems do? Could NATO even establish air superiority in Ukraine?

[1] https://www.twz.com/air/f-35-had-to-maneuver-to-evade-houthi...

[2] https://www.twz.com/u-s-mq-9-drone-shot-down-by-iranian-back...

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Losing air assess is a given. Package Q alone lost two F-16s. We lost an F-117 in Bosnia. But run enough Wild Weasel and eventually we did establish air superiority.

In Ukraine there is no establishing superiority without occupying Russian territory.

I used to draw mushroom clouds against hills in the 80s. I do not want to see NATO in Russia. I only want Russia out of Ukraine.

US isn’t deploying its best SEAD tech against Houthis either, though.

I don’t disagree with the general discussion; but it’s worth remembering the US would also change tactics against Russia or China.

I don't disagree with what you are saying, and tactics also evolve a lot during conflicts.

But my point is that the actual effectiveness of US forces against top-tier Russian or Chinese integrated air defense systems is unknown. And getting more unknown by the day rather than less.

I would say though that we can probably look at the Ukraine war and understand how their air defense systems are working. And the answer to that seems to be: not as well as previously assumed, they do work but have been vulnerable. This is mainly the S300 and S400. I couldn't find much about the newest system, Russia isn't able to do much manufacturing of the most complex weapons at the moment. If I had a guess, based on what we've seen in Ukraine, US forces would shred the Russians in the air and water, but ground forces would be far behind when it came to drone warfare. I'm just a chump sitting at home though so...

China is a whole other story and honestly I'm ok never finding out that answer.

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