A lot of reporting on the Coalition air forces' performance against the Iraqi's Soviet-style (and equipped) air defenses tends to portray it as more or less of a cakewalk for the former, allowing Coalition air power to strike Iraqi ground forces almost at will, thereby dramatically impacting the course of the ground war. Some use these portrayals to argue that NATO would perform similarly against Soviet air defenses, allowing NATO aircraft to quickly focus more on tactical battlefield support. While it is true that the Coalition was able to establish air superiority over most of the battle space relatively quickly, it wasn't easy. The Coalition forces experienced some unanticipated challenges, and were forced to make some major adjustments on the fly; otherwise, the air campaign would have been significantly more costly (for the Coalition) than it turned out to be. This brief article does a good job of describing some of the challenges faced by Coalition air forces, and explains how they led to the adoption of different tactics.
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-...ision-strikes/
From this analysis, I would argue that the Soviet's denser, more complex air defense networks and more capable systems would have presented a much bigger challenge to NATO air forces than the Iraqis ever did, and that NATO losses would be much higher than they were in the Gulf. A deadlier threat environment would have necessitated similar, if not more dramatic, tactical adjustments (namely, smaller, stealthier strike packages), which would have reduced the impact of NATO air power on Soviet ground force operations.
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