Only if you're wildly overconfident of your control of the skies. I hear some A-10 pilots are looking at the photos and are getting blue balls.
Originally Posted by the_real_Barleycorn
which apparently the Russian air force has yet to accomplish. that should have been task 1 before troops even began rolling in, in most areas. the disputed eastern areas they had more leeway. the US gave them the gold standard modern battle plan in how we used air power before the land invasion in Iraq.
our air success didn't quite invalidate the old military axiom "you can't win a war with air power alone" but came damn close to it. so why wasn't Russia able to come anywhere close to this?
all the experts are shocked at Russia's inability to control the skies. their tanks not so much as they are all outdated designs and they have a huge numerical advantage over Ukraine. at least their tanks are not clearly superior as Ukraine's tanks are the same models as Russia. Yet they've been bogged down and even repelled in some cases.
before the Ukraine invasion Russia had about 12,000 tanks and the US about 6,000. the bulk of the Army's tanks are the M1 Abrams, vastly superior to the Russian T-72/80/90 despite upgrades. they have only a small number of their newest MBT the T-14 Armada. in a large scale tank engagement the US tanks could easily destroy the Russian tanks 3 to 1 or more. we know that from the Iraq wars.
even the dated M60 Patton tanks formerly used by the Marines and now mainly in National Guard units would be able to fare well against the Russian tanks minus the T-14 Armada. imagine what could happen if Ukraine had a few thousand M1 Abrams to go against Russian armor? that and their lack of control of the skies could be a humiliating situation for Russia, more so than it has been.