• thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 days ago

    Missiles do not equal air superiority. Iran was able to lob dozens of missiles at Israel and achieved a good level of hits, even with Israel’s advanced missile defense systems. Under no circumstances did they have anything approaching air superiority over the skies of Israel. There’s a difference between carpet bombing large civilian areas and surgical strikes, but regardless Russia is currently not able to do either in Ukraine even if they wanted to. I don’t think this is due to lack of capability; if Russia wanted to, they could achieve air supremacy over Ukraine and bomb at will. I don’t think they’re willing to pay the price to establish that because they’ve calculated they can win without it, which I tend to agree with.