In Defense of the Red Army

[Raellus]

This is an interesting piece on F-117 Nighthawk combat ops over Serbia. Apparently, a second Nighthawk was hit by a Serbian SAM.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-force-in-1999

I'm glad we never had to find out, but I really wonder how a full-spectrum air war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would have played out.

I just recently re-read Red Storm Rising and, although I still enjoyed it, one thing that really bothered me about Clancy and Bond's vision- especially in light of this story- is how ineffective Soviet AAA/SAM defenses are against NATO strike and attack aircraft. There's no Red Army bridge, command post, fuel depot, or tank farm that NATO aircraft don't manage to destroy in the novel.

I could forgive the authors this vision if they'd written this after Desert Shield/Storm, because I think that experience convinced many that Soviet-made air defenses were no match for NATO aircraft. I still content that this lesson was wrong- the Gulf War was not a peer v. peer conflict. It was like an NFL team (the Coalition) playing against a Pop Warner [under 12] team whose players had a few pieces of adult-size pads (the Iraqis). Against a modern, full-scale, integrated, Soviet air defense (AAA & SAM) network, I think NATO aircraft would have sustained significant losses.

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