You think things are any better after 20 years of the GWOT and distorted spending?
Yes, particularly given a large portion of that spending has been on the air force and intelligence gathering systems, the latter of which would be extremely helpful at locating air defense installations.
is now finding that units like the Patriot missile batteries aren't all their cracked up to be against the Russians in Ukraine.
What? Ukraine doesn't have patriot missiles.
You really think the US could simply dominate a country like Russia which has focused on ground based air defenses and having to fight the US?
Given the observed performance of the Russian military, yes.
If they struggled to dominate Serbia after spending 20 years fighting terrorists the US doesn't really have a lot of savvy on fighting a major opponent.
Sebia was
before the war on terror, not after.
See all the silly American generals claiming that because Ukraine didn't quit after 3 days that means somehow Russia failed.
As far as I known, most defense analysts have been shocked at the underperformance of russuan forces, including Russian ones. Remember that big, angry and disappointed speech Putin gave last week? That was not the speech of a man confident that everything was going according to plan.
What the Russians have done is shut down the Ukrainian air force. What's left is surviving with massive NATO intelligence support and by hiding and barely conducting sorties.
It's ridiculous that the Ukrainian air force is even still functional at all after a month of fighting.
They also took out one F-117, a secret aircraft that was supposed to be impossible to take down.
Well, apparently the Serbs didn't know that and shot it down anyway.
If older, obsolete radar was an easy counter to stealth aircraft, then everyone would have just built more of those systems and no one would have bothered investing in stealth tech.
That's obviously not the case.
What is the current US 5th gen airforce comprised of?
Oh, yeah, the F-35, aka a massive boondoggle that ended up being massively late and massively over budget.
It's not exactly unheard of for defense systems to end up costing more money and taking more time to deploy than expected. Nor is it an exclusively western issue, just look at the development history of the T-14, or more notably the SU-57.
Sorry, but I am not all that enthusiastic about it, and there is the minor fact that it was never really tested in actual combat, and that the Russians have invested tons of money into more advanced air defense systems and radars.
It's seen actual combat, which is more than can be said for the 57 and most of Russia's new equipment. Which they've certainly spent a lot of money on, but the evidence available suggests that Russia isn't getting thier money's worth out of that spending (IE, brand new T-90s getting owned by javelin missiles).
Maybe thier air defense systems will defy the trend seen in every single other bit of Russia military hardware, but I wouldn't bet on it.