A Marine helicopter (CH-53) aircrewman told me at an airshow that it takes about 50 man-hours of maintainence for every 1 hour of flight time to operate a CH-53.
I just don't see many operational aircraft in most parts of the world c. 2000. Aside from a few isolated regions, fuel availability would be a significant hindrance to air ops. Modern manufacturing is an oxymoron in 2000, and spares would come only from cannibalizing other aircraft.
Look at the airforce of nearly any failed state- you might see a couple old turboprop transports and one or two jet fighter bombers still operational out of an original force of dozens or hundreds of both types. No spares and/or poor maintainance means an imminent end to air ops.
And then there's the early years of the war. I think that the modern battlespace- especially over Europe during the height of the Cold War- would be extremely hazzardous to most aircraft types. Attrition rates would be really high while production, even before the exchange, would be fairly low. It takes a lot longer to build an F-16 than it did to build a P-51. With only a couple of years for the major combatants to gear up for total war, there wouldn't be nearly enough replacements to fill the gaps left by the casualties. Once the exchange begins, aircraft manufacture would come to an abrupt end.
This means that by 2000, the surviving airfleets would have been operating for about 3 years with no replacement aircraft, few new spares, dwindling supplies of cannibalized spares, a trickle of jet fuel, and probably only the bare minimum of maintainance.
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