Judging by the number of western vehicles lost to mines in the last few weeks alone they do not perform the same fighting a peer military with access to large amounts of modern equipment vs ill equipped militias fighting an insurgency
No, but they haven’t faced massive minefields, helicopter gunships, artillery, electronic countermeasures, airstrikes, etc when occupying Iraq or Afghanistan. Fighting guerrillas and fighting a peer army are two entirely different beasts, and we see the proof in more western tanks being lost in 2 months than USA lost in 2 decades in Iraq or Afghanistan
A butter knife works the same when cutting butter or steel. It still isn’t useful for cutting steel. This is what they’re trying to communicate.
A reaper drone works the same when blowing up random weddings or when flying in airspace with a networked AA system of S300s, S400s, and S500s
Which is to say we know the underlying physics continues to operate the same but the context changes how useful the equipment is, because a butterknife is made for butter and a Reaper is made for blowing up weddings without an air defense network nearby.
There you go. Time to give Ukraine some AC 130 gun ships. Good suggestion.
What, are there Russian hospitals in need of bombing? C130 can’t operate if there is air defense
They had gunships in Afghanistan and US still lost, not sure I see your point here. Not to mention the Taliban didn’t have close to the anti-aircraft capabilities that the Russian military has. AC-130s work fine for bombing defenseless hospitals, but against a force with radar, electronic countermeasures, anti-aircraft missiles, fighter jets, and all the other tools that a modern military has access to? I think the gunships would not be nearly as effective as you think
Russia has the best air defense in the world. C-130 is a big slow moving target. Even in Afghanistan they operated only at night.
