Sure, It Was The "Ghost of Kuwait"...

 ... but even US Air and Space Forces magazine has to admit: 

Iran has developed air defense systems that can use passive infrared sensors rather than radar to target aircraft, a solution that previously proved effective in Yemen when employed by the Iranian-backed Houthis, which downed around half a dozen MQ-9 Reapers during Operation Rough Rider last year. The stealthy F-35 evades radar, but infrared sensors home in on heat. The F-35 is now one of around 20 U.S. Air Force aircraft known to be damaged or destroyed in the nearly three-week-old Iran war.

So, let me clarify. 

1. F-35 DOES NOT "evade radar", it is pure BS. It has lower signature in the front semisphere. It is totally detectible;

2. What is "around" 20 aircraft? 19? 22? 25? 

Well, make your own conclusions. But, it will take USAF some time for getting used to that, since this is the FIRST time in many decades that it encountered an actual air defense which is newer than was AD in Yugoslavia--by a generation, if not two--and that getting high on fairy tales by 404 on issues of AD and air combat is not good for your health, both physical and mental. I know they still run Top Gun: Maverick in selected theaters. I do prefer, however, the first one--fun and great soundtrack. Ah yes, Kelly McGillis at her stunning top self. To those who still consume this "stealth" BS, MQ-9 Reaper drone is also "stealthy", yet somehow they are falling from the skies. Yes, it was very successful against mighty Taliban air force and air defense. 

Here is poor-poor dear Stephen Miller's reaction during Trump's speech on his victories in Iran. 

Something went wrong, but what? /s

I Really Have Difficulty ...

 ... grasping this. Always had. 

It is just the game. Congrats, of course, to Seahawks, but sports event and air force? I totally get when, say, Blue Angels fly over graduation ceremony of US Naval Academy--totally appropriate and beautiful, but this. This is--total kitsch militarism for hoi polloi which should be reserved for MILITARY parades. Not the likes, of course, Donnie organized recently, but in general--there is nothing wrong with periodic demonstration of military hardware within appropriate setup. Bread and Circuses. I am not against sports, but this ...

Per Lavrov today--some really special verbiage and indication that Russians never trusted Trump. First, the frontline and 404 power generating facilities are testimony to this fact, and events on the frontline, of course.  

Now It Is Really Over...

 ... for Russia. I mean it...

During a speech to the U.S. Air Force, transgender Space Force Col. Bree Fram demanded everyone use pronouns in their emails as a way to enhance “winning war fighting strategies”. 

As you may have guessed it by now, the Russian General Staff is in urgent communication with Chinese General Staff trying to figure out how to update current field manuals:

As you may have guessed it, the main issue is how to break into Link 16 and convey those wrong pronouns to USAF pilots, who still didn't get the message on how to fight properly.

A Pure Unrefined Military Porn.

There is nothing like this in NATO, period. No, some may have similarities in function but Tor-M2 proved itself an absolute monster of short range AD. Not that others, like S1 Pantsir, did worse. They also performed brilliantly. But here is the combat work of two Tor-M2 systems. 

Another thing about Tors is that they can launch while moving and, as you may have guessed it, they are fully netcentric. Plus, IRIS-T and NASAMS performed in VSU primarily as useless targets for Russia's stand-off weapons thus providing dismal, in fact embarrassing, combat record. This also doesn't mean that VSU doesn't have a leaker here and there--once in a while they get some Storm Shadow hitting children's campground, or HIMARS hitting some bridge, sometimes, very seldom, they score a hit on Russian military. But primarily most of them (90-95% at least) are getting shot down. Tors play a huge role in this combat score. 

So, what's the future for Tors? It is bright, as it is for Buk-M3 and S1 Pantsir--they provided an outstanding shield for Russian forces on and around battlefield, not to mention an immense data which already allows to introduce even more deadly and advanced upgrades. I talk about short to medium range systems. And then there are those monsters such as S-350, S-300s, S-400 and S-500--that is a whole other story of Soviet Union/Russia pursuing non-stop for more than 70 years a complete domination of the air-defense field. The combat performance of Russian Air Defense has been outstanding, to put it mildly and there is very little doubt that the integrated system will continue to evolve and improve with some systems we haven't seen yet going on-line and completely overthrowing NATO air and space operations concepts and making them completely obsolete. This we can already observe today, in real time. 

In the end, even technology savvy people from USAF have to admit:

The need to address all-domain authorities has emerged as a common theme during recent Tier 1 exercises, US Air Force wargames, and experiments. Joint all-domain command and control’s lateral connectivity, where every sensor is connected to every shooter, begs the issue of command and control: Who makes the decision to shoot? When, where, and with what? Today’s C2 construct puts each service component and domain into its own silo where they work in parallel as deconflicted by the Joint combatant or Joint Force commander. Yet this current C2 construct is seen as antiquated and too slow for the anticipated speed, range, and multidomain nature of a future great-power conflict. In an era where all services and domains are connected and speed is a priority, the question becomes, Who gets to command and control all-domain fires? The answer to this question has huge implications for air component Airmen. 

I have news for the author of this piece, USAF Colonel (ret.) Thomas Cantrell--the US has no speed, range nor multidomain experience and only now begins to see what it is when looks at 404 and SMO. In other words--remove Douhet writings and Doolittle experiences into the museum where they belong because modern battlefield "of a future great-power conflict" will look nothing like what they teach in NATO war colleges, and combined NATO will lose advantage in numbers of air power in the first 48-72 hours of such a conflict.  This is not a theorem, it is an axiom now. What will be the situation in Washington when NATO loses 40-50 F-35s and 3-4 E3 Sentry in the first 24 hours? Exactly... Is S-600 coming?

Larry Thinks About Hunger, Patrick--About Mistakes.

Larry Johnson asks a question--are we in for a famine? This is not a vain question, it is a very important one and Larry gives some numbers:

Let me help you with the math–Russia and the Ukraine combined accounted for 33% of all wheat exports among the top ten exporters. Russia exports more than the United States. Let that sink in for a moment.  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is highly likely to disrupt Ukraine’s ability to fully plant and harvest wheat in 2022. And Russia will be blocked, in theory at least, from being able to accept U.S. dollars for its wheat export. On March 9 President Putin signed an order banning the exports of some goods and raw materials.

Larry presents some figures which should (we can only hope) give some pause to insanity which passes in the US for "foreign policy" and economics. Read the whole thing at Larry's blog--the link is in my blog-roll. 

Patrick Armstrong meanwhile writes about what he got wrong. I disagree, he got things right based on available information of that time. Nobody knew, albeit many did suspect, that new facts will change the thought process by many analysts, me included, about the objectives of Russia's campaign in 404. As Patrick writes:

So why was I wrong? What did I miss? I believe I missed three things – two I didn’t know about and one that I did but did not properly weigh. These are: the nuclear weapons issue, the planned strike on LDNR and the biolabs.

Biolabs is a huge issue with the US de facto admitting through Nuland's response at the hearings in Congress about them that the US was involved in developing bio-weapons program in Ukraine and was also working on a genetic weapons. This issue is not going anywhere, it will stay top and center in Russia's foreign policy agenda and it will feature prominently at the War Crimes Tribunal. By now Russian MoD and FSB have more than enough documents and witnesses to make a case, a very strong one.  

Lara Logan, however, makes one mistake, albeit it is not her mistake--it is an inevitable confusion by those in the US military who grasp at the last straw of US military credibility trying to confuse people who are removed from operational matters:

RuAF is a completely different animal than the USAF. Moreover, the flying hours of RuAF are probably in the top 5 in the world and RuAF performed extremely well, supporting a very high operational tempo in Syria, and now did an admirable job in 404. But that brings us to a larger issue which I stress all the time--Russia and the US fight very differently, but the US military is extremely sensitive when it comes to its combat "record" which, frankly, is underwhelming in the last 70+ years and the US fighting doctrine is distilled into a very simple principle--get overwhelming air dominance (against third rate opponents) and then blow shit indiscriminately. 

Moreover, the USAF doesn't know what it means to fight in the modern EW and AD environment. The last time it faced more or less adequate AD was in Vietnam and it lost 10,000 aircraft, 2,500 of them combat fixed wing ranging from B-52 strategic bombers to F-4s and even UAVs. Russian VKS of 2022 are a completely different game. And any USAF operations against Russia's VKS in a real conventional war will result in the most dramatic losses. Again, this only applies if US (NATO) air forces survive the meeting with Russia's high precision stand-off weapons at air bases. If to believe this video, it is Kinzhal flying to target--underground bunkers with ammo and weapons in Western Ukraine. Those were build to withstand indirect nuclear explosion impact. Kinzhal, reportedly, had no problems destroying them. I doubt this video shows Kinzhal, but still, military porn.

In related news, all Bastion launchers are capable to launch 3M22 Zircon. Evidently, per Russia's MoD, P-800 Onyx from Bastions are actively used in 404. I will expand on this military porn issue later. That's the primer for the weekend.

Story, Never-Ending Story (c).

Ah, so now we hear... the same ol' song. 

The new U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff is warning his service it faces stiff competition in a future war, involving aircraft and personnel losses not seen for 80 years. General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. believes the Air Force must work to accelerate change, adapting to new technologies faster than its potential adversaries. Brown warns that “good enough today will fail tomorrow,” with grave implications for the entire country. 

He also goes as far as to predict WW II level loses for USAF against peers. This is really a classic "cry wolf" situation because Pentagon inflated threats so many times that when, actually, the statement has a ring of truth to it, few will publicly aknowledge its merit. USAF, of course, still blows the smoke up out asses because what the USAF wants is to fight some third-tier opponent with grossly inferior air-force in order to make such statements (famous "analyst" Mizokami does it for them):

The Air Force has essentially been the supreme air force on the planet since 1991. The destruction of the Yugoslav Air Force in 1999 marked the beginning of more than 20 years of virtually uncontested air operations for the service lasting to this day. Since then, combat operations over Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere have largely been uncontested. 

For starters, Mizokami mixed two different things. "Uncontested" merely meant that the US was and is bombing the shit out of countries which didn't have viable air forces to start with. Yugoslav Air Force was barely a factor in NATO's gang-rape of Serbia, which didn't prevent the US from threatening Russia trying to ensure that no S-300 AD complexes ever made it to Serbia. Moreover, in Syria the USAF is contested in a sense that Russia's VKS guard vast territories of Syria from the US control. Russia closes her eyes mostly on Israel's operations against Iranian assets there. The decision is purely political and underscores an immense complexity of politics in the Middle East. Lastly, the USAF met a proper peer in a proper, classic, air-to-air combat only in Korean War against Soviet 64th Fighter Corps and it was an unpleasant account for USAF. I do not include Vietnam here, but even there Vietnamese gave a good account of themselves in the air, while making sure that Air Defense becomes a more complex affair than merely AAA and dogfights. They, with the help of the USSR, surely succeeded. 

Today we are deep inside Real Revolution in Military Affairs where the USAF faces insurmountable barrier of advanced technologies and operational concepts which make all, grossly backward, views on the air-war as merely a contest between two opposing air forces as relevant to reality on the ground, or in the air, for that matter, as having a crank-shaft for 2020 Toyota Camry or Chevrolet Camaro as means of starting the engine. It is good that Charles Brown acknowledges possible losses for USAF in the modern peer-to-peer war, but as Russians say--best air defense is our tanks at enemy's airfields. Russia is not going to be sending tanks to take Rammstein or whatever forward jump air strips may be chosen in case the US and NATO want to commit physical suicide, but modern air war, even before any aircraft reaches the edges of weapons' release, which in itself a dubious proposition, will pretty much have no airfields to come back to, nor, very possible, countries from which any attempts may be made against Russia or, for that matter, China. 

Reality of modern air war is such that every single NATO aircraft will be tracked the moment it takes off from any field in Europe, in fact, many will be tracked while at the runway getting ready to take off, the first wave of counter-strike will be in the air shortly after that and even before those aircraft are properly airborne things will start happening which USAF never encountered before, ranging from great degrading, or complete shut-down, of communications to long-range EW, to disabling GPS and the list is too long to continue. And this is before anything happens at all. USAF never in its history operated in the environment like that and the remedy it suggests is, oh, boy...

How will the Air Force do this? Drones, drones, and more drones. Manned military aviation has been in a death spiral for some time. Technological complexity leads to increasingly sophisticated aircraft that require more time and money to develop. As a result, planes like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter require two decades to develop, cost $90 million each, and require months to build. The result is a smaller air force where even brand-new fighter jets feature 20-year-old technology, which isn't capable of making up for World War II-style losses.

I am having a... facepalm. A real drone, capable of any real military impact while carrying out whatever mission: strike, recon, air-to-air etc. will still be subjected, in the war against peer (Russia and China), to the same set of threats and counter-measures, which will either mitigate their impact or derail drones' mission altogether, unless it is a drone which is...well..expensive and extremely valuable, which brings us all back to the square one. The United States, as Andrei Raevsky once succinctly observed, can not fight wars on cheap, period. In fact, the ratios of US military technology costs relative to the same by peers continue to grow across the board for the United States. This is not a good indicator at all, for ANY military technology the United States procures or is about to. Same applies to drones. The world changed and any most "advanced" technologies the US tries to develop and procure are already obsolete the moment they leave manufacturing floor. 

Without understanding of modern peer-to-peer conflict as a whole, as a vertical engagement from a strategic down to tactical levels, with all forces involved in it and interacting constantly across modern battle-space, all this silly talk is just...well, silly. At least RAND's big air operations honcho understands that:

We lose a lot of people. We lose a lot of equipment. We usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggression by the adversary,” RAND analyst David Ochmanek told a security conference on Thursday. “In our games, when we fight Russia and China, blue gets its ass handed to it.”

Well, good that he at least understands that. As per "aggression" tropes, as I say non-stop: it so tired, it is so contrived and its really so rich coming from people whose actual combat score against peaceful weddings exceeds that against competent and determined air forces as of lately, that one has to simply dismiss this BS and admit that at this stage US military simply cannot adapt and develop a viable fighting doctrine and technology to fight serious adversary capable of rearranging stones, even without any nuclear weapons, anywhere in the world. In related news, Boeing wants at least 20% of its labor force to be black, while Hollywood issued new guide-lines for Oscars on inclusion (wokeness, that is). What can possibly go wrong? s/ 

But What About F-35?

Which, as we all know, is the top dog, super-pooper, invisible and the best aircraft, like, ever. That is what all those "analysts" with backgrounds in journalism and LEGO design tell us all the time. Yet: 

ST. LOUIS — Boeing is preparing to build F-15 fighter planes for the U.S. Air Force at its St. Louis County plant even though the military branch hasn’t bought the jet in over a decade.The Chicago-based company began ramping up its F-15 production line near St. Louis after the Air Force submitted a nearly $8 billion budget request last month that included eight F-15s next year and 72 in the following four years. The request came as a surprise to many since the U.S. military has moved toward stealth fighters, such as Lockheed Martin's F-35, in recent years. Prat Kumar, Boeing International’s vice president, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the company is investing before Congress approves the budget request so it can respond quickly should the Air Force seek rapid field deployment.

I will leave commentaries on this "Stealth" thingy to people who never saw basic Radar Equation in their life, but the move by USAF is very telling. If one dismisses the whole cat-fight in Congress regarding who gets what:

Five senators from states where the F-35 is produced, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, sent President Donald Trump and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan a letter before the Air Force detailed its budget request that warned against funding F-15 planes at the expense of F-35s.

But the issue here is rather simple: F-35 is a disaster. It is multi-billion dollar combat embarrassment designed, for the astronomical price and meek combat capabilities, to fight third world militaries. It is not survivable in a modern peer-to-peer airspace. F-15, on the other hand, is an old reliable horse which at least flies and costs much less than F-35--thus fewer political ramifications if one is shot down. In general, something is up with this whole US combat aviation thingy and most likely it is just continuation of a "commercialization" of the military technology in US because "investors" want their Returns on Investment (ROI) fast and juicy. And so the saga of USS Zumwalt-class DDG, F-35, LCS and other commercial items continues. Who cares about defense or offense, for that matter. As long as fat cats are happy with their checks, anything goes. You know, like newest, still non-existent Columbia-class SSBN:

There's no risk to the contractors that this program will be canceled. The GAO said the most likely scenario is that the Pentagon will be forced to go back to Congress and ask for additional funds in order to remain on schedule. The agency did not provide an estimate of how much more would be needed, referring instead to a report by the Congressional Budget Office that concluded the Columbia program could end up costing as much as $145 billion.

So, $145 billion/12 submarines=$12.1 billion per single submarine. Lovely! Can I get a cut?      

Looks Like F-15 Will Stick Around For A While.

That is in a form of F-15X being pitched by Boeing. I was about to exclaim: but what about Stealth!? Forgive me for using this moniker instead of more professional terms such as reduced physical fields or low(er) observability, depending on diapason, of course. F-15 is a good aircraft with some "kill history" against inept pilots (mostly Arabs) and old Soviet technology and the idea of modernization is never bad once the fact of this whole Stealth being useless against modern, as one example among many, Air-Defense systems, which do really well in terms of sensor (data) fusion and have no problems in locking onto any "Stealthy" aircraft, that is to say, shoot it down, is considered.

So, in the end it all comes down to a classic Force--its size, structure and the way it delivers its salvo, or salvos of its weapons. That is HOW it is deployed and how it will fare, in case of a serious war with even remotely competent adversary, in terms of its attrition rates. So, numbers do matter, in the end, right? Right, especially since US Air Force knows (I know it does) that first radiophotonics location devices do exist and, in fact, already detect, track and (I assume) lock on any target--stealth, super stealth or, possibly even a super-duper stealth. So, enter good ol' F-15, give it a full glass cockpit, new engines, some modern nice AA weapons and... drum roll... what do we read in the end of this informative article? Ah, here it is.  

 Looking to the future, the sources said, the F-15X is ideally suited to carry hypersonic weapons

Why such an emphasis on hyper-sonic weapons? Because it is all fad, en vogue, all the hype and, actually, in a more serious way--a new technological paradigm. We are not on the verge, we are inside a true Revolution In Military Affairs. No, not the one born out of turkey shoot of grossly incompetent and badly trained Saddam's Army, but out of what (I love to quote him a lot) Douglas Macgregor warned about: 

“In 110 days of fighting the German army in France during 1918, the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force sustained 318,000 casualties, including 110,000 killed in action. That’s the kind of lethality waiting for U.S. forces in a future war with real armies, air forces, air defenses and naval power. Ignoring this reality is the road to future defeats and American decline. It’s time to look beyond the stirring images of infantrymen storming machine-gun nests created by Hollywood and to see war for what it is and will be in the future: the ruthless extermination of the enemy with accurate, devastating firepower from the sea, from the air, from space and from mobile, armored firepower on land.” 

As per F-35 or F-22. Well, you decide. 

This Guy Did More For Peace In Two Minutes Than Diplomats Did In Years.

Remember me writing about heroism of simple people doing their job when it is impossible to do it? Who in America today remembers T-4 Truman Kimbro? Who remembers today exceptional heroism of USS Samuel B. Roberts? Acts of ultimate sacrifice, such as Sasha Prokhorenko, burn themselves into national psyche. They make us recall what real men are. This week Russia honored her latest hero--Major Roman Filipov. Tens of thousands people came to honor him in a sign of spiritual and moral revival of Russia:

But it was this American former Air Force man who transcended borders by his pure humanity and did his small, in reality huge, part in conveying America which still is out there, which is down to earth, which understands:

Russian response was overwhelmingly positive and... human and it made all major networks' news. These are REAL news. 

We all ask ourselves if we would have guts to do as Filipov did. As long as we question ourselves this way--we remain men.    

RAND's Wet Dreams.

For those who are interested in what makes RAND "click" nowadays in terms of its delusions and doctrinal and operational gibberish they "research", one may try the latest from Mr. Ochmanek and Co. in terms of what they present as:

U.S. Military Capabilities and Forces for a Dangerous World,  Rethinking the U.S. Approach to Force Planning

You can easily download PDF with their tedious report and if you have the time you may indulge yourself in about 153+ pages of an operational and strategic delusion which RAND's big brains present as a scientific research. I will not elaborate here on some overtly preposterous claims and false assumptions such as this one, among many:

To defeat ISIS, the United States has supported two major elements of the anti-Assad rebellion in Syria.

LOL, yes, by supporting and training these very same ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Or this strategic pearl unique in its hilarity:

During spring 2016, the Russian aerial campaign had some success in helping the Syrian armed forces to defeat a variety of rebel groups in and around Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. The Russian aerial intervention has complicated U.S. and allied use of air power and SOF units to inflict damage on ISIS.

Not to mention, of course, this, expected by now, statement:

More to the point, for the United States, having the finest force in the world does not, in and of itself, guarantee that those forces will be able to meet all of the demands being placed on them. Since the United States’ entry into World War II, this nation has espoused and largely practiced a uniquely ambitious national security strategy.

Obviously, causalities of WW II, as well as proportions and scales of it are not known to authors but how the "finest force" managed not to win since 1945 any conflict with any more or less determined (forget peer) adversary remains a complete mystery shrouded in the fog of RANDeanese or Pentagonese lingo and in the obfuscation of the most crucial operational, strategic, cultural and social factors of wars the United States fought since WW II. Well, WW II history in the US is altogether  a peculiar subject. But never mind, folks. Obviously, the authors of this "research" come up with pretty generic conclusions. You know, something like that: 

Addressing the challenges posed by the most-capable adversaries generally calls not for a larger U.S. force but rather for a force equipped with appropriate modern weapons and support assets that is also postured for responsive and resilient operations in theaters of potential conflict.

Yes, gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more of the same. That means more pork in producing weapon systems which do not work. And here comes this thing in this report--Russia, being named a main adversary of the United States (China, obviously, is second--but that is not really a contingency. Why, is a separate matter)--what kind of war with Russia. Forget now highly anti-scientific and anti-military propaganda BS of a "hybrid war" simulacra--by now the use of it is a first sign of military incompetence of people who express their opinions on the warfare. Authors, after repeating all tired and false cliches about US military, review the force required to fight a so called major war with Russia. They even tabulate it. Here is this table:

Granted Mr. Ochmanek's background in Air Power, one is literally forced, however, to ask him where did this number of 28 fighter squadrons and 7 bomber squadrons required to fight those pesky Russian Forces which are about to overtake free and democratic Europe come from? It is a number which can be expanded to a number of single aircraft using maximum parameter of 24 aircraft per squadron, that is 28 x 24 = 672 fighter aircraft and 7 x 12 = 84 bomber aircraft, plus all kinds of other transport and AWACS etc. So, altogether we are talking about 756 combat aircraft by 2020 "major conflict" with Russia. That is, of course, if Russia would want for some unknown reason "invade" those magnificent Baltic States. Obviously, to sound scientific Ochmanek and his group employ all kinds of platitudes and pre-conditions  such as:

We exhort the reader not to place too much store in the numbers in the table. They are based on the authors’ estimates using internal analyses and unclassified sources. The numbers that DoD would use are undoubtedly somewhat different. Our purpose in presenting them is not to attempt to provide definitive estimates of need, but rather to show a concrete example of how our recommended approach could be applied and to provide a basis for first-order comparisons of the size and cost of the resulting forces.

Well, this is all fine and dandy and I, actually, agree with authors here on this particular issue--it is advisable to give at least SOME numbers which illustrate methods; but immediately here comes the question--WHAT methods are behind those estimates? This, if one discards this fluffy rhetoric about "finest force" and all this "stealth", "platforms" and other BS lingo. One must ask next questions and answer them:

Q. When was the last time the USAF fought in highly dense EW environment with AD systems whose capabilities already today cover ALL challenges which are presented by the latest in US technology? 

A. Never. In fact, the USAF may not even internalize yet that it will (not may) fight blind with its C3 either seriously challenged or completely disrupted. 

Q. When was the last time the USAF fought world-class adversary AF which can approach or match USAF on the theater both in quality of its pilots and aircraft, and in quantity? 

A. Never, since Korea. 

Q. When was the last time the USAF deployed to the front-line, or even rear, airbases which were subjected to major attacks by adversary's both AF and salvos of cruise and tactical operational high precision stand-off weapons, which led to a severe disruption of air operations, massive casualties of personnel and significant loss of aircraft? 

A. Never. After observing a rather unimpressive performance (OK, failure) of the Patriot anti-missile systems against obsolete 1970s Yemeni Scud knock-offs recently, one is forced to ask what will this AD do against state-of-the-art, stealthy, AI-driven and EW resistant missiles' salvo, say of 40 or 60 missiles? How about several such salvos?

Q. Does Mr. Ochmanek understand that the myth of Stealth has been completely dispelled and modern AD complexes and advanced radar systems of modern aircraft such as SU-30SM, SU-35C or MiG-31BM see, track and can shoot down any "Stealth" target? 

A. Maybe, but his Politburo tells him to produce this pseudo-scientific trash otherwise he will lose his sinecure. 

Q. Does this RAND group calculate own attrition (or FERs, Fractional Exchange Rates) in such conflict correctly? 

A. No. Anyone who thinks that the force of 762 good but fairly conventional (or really bad) combat aircraft can go against Russian Air-Space Forces in Russia's vicinity and win is either delusional or incompetent. USAF will not be able to suppress Russia's AD system to start with, the opposite most likely will be true. 

I am not even going to ground forces here--any military realist can see what is coming by 2020. So, the more one begins to ask this kind of questions, the more one begins to see a complete lunacy of this kind of "planning", "research" and "advice", which, in case of RAND, is delivered to US policy-makers as a distilled wisdom.  It is obvious that this "wisdom", as I already stated, is more about money--funding for Military-Industrial Complex. As DIA's Russian Military Power reports:

Russia also has a deep and abiding distrust of U.S. efforts to promote democracy around the world and what it perceives as a U.S. campaign to impose a single set of global values.

Here is the issue, Russia doesn't "perceive" anything about the US anymore. US' "stellar" record of unleashing conflicts all over the world, supporting terrorist groups and all kinds of illegal overthrows of governments is out there for everyone to see. So, if that is called "promotion of democracy" then I kinda get it why huge number of people around the globe try to arm themselves. But the 800 pound gorilla in those calculations is still in the room and it is inescapable not to notice it: when was the last time the US won anything militarily? I can only state obvious--bar some turkey shoot in Gulf in 1991--nothing. One of the reasons for failing time after time to win a classic military conflict, that is "compel the enemy to do our will" is, as I continue to state non-stop for years now, a complete delusion of American military planners who long ago bought their own carefully-crafted mythology about superiority of own weapons, which are not superior, or about superiority of an American soldier (American soldier is a good soldier but not "superior"--it depends), or of American "planning" which fails time after time the test of military reality, in which "superior" and false numerical coefficients are being plugged into the combat models to produce politically correct outcomes. As this RAND "research" testifies to--the lessons haven't been learned and they cannot be learned--they are difficult to learn until one sees what real war does to his own family, property, country, in the end--to himself. Those things are unknown and beyond the grasp of the "best of the best" US military planners, since none of them ever fought defending their home. Russians did it for millennium. No amount of falsification, stolen valor or propaganda can hide this simple military fact. Certainly not this RAND's pseudo-scientific report.