Where are you getting this from? There certainly has been some exaggeration online and in the media about the capabilities of western military hardware, especially tanks. But that doesn't mean they were bad, just that they are far from invulnerable. And there are quite a few examples where they saved the soldiers inside when a Russian tank would have tossed their turret.

Patriot works in Ukraine, they even got a few Khinzal. But of course any air defense is limited by available ammo and you need enough of the right kind of air defense in the right places for this to work well. The Ukraine is really limited by the number of available systems and ammunition. And for something like the Shahed drones you need other ways to defend yourself to avoid exhausting your precious ammunition for advanced air defense systems.

Russia also was shown to be nearly unable to intercept Storm Shadow/SCALP EG at the beginning. So the somewhat aging European cruise missiles were able to easily penetrate current Russian air defenses.

I didn't say western hardware bad, but exaggeration leading to RU dismissal and thinking that EU would be able to stomp RU in unrestricted warefare... especially without US assistence in short/medium time frame.

>patriot works

With US ISR (i.e. AWACs) providing early warning, IIRC correctly UKR was salvoing full patriot battery to intercept single kinzhal/zircon tier hypersonics, i.e. entire supply of EU patriot launcher can be overwhelmed by handful of hypersonics.

>storm shadow

Similarly UKR could sneak cruise missiles through RU IADs is because US info share helped plan missions/routes to circumvent RU defenses. Competent (not even super modern) air defense has like almost 100% interception on subsonic targets like cruise missiles, provided the are detected.

The TLDR is hard to say how EU hardware will perform without US force multiplier tier ISR. Which will effect everything from finding targets to hit, hitting targets, and avoid getting hit even with same/better hardware. Which again, is not to say EU is bad... but EU very unlikely to be US level great.

> Russia also was shown to be nearly unable to intercept Storm Shadow/SCALP EG at the beginning. So the somewhat aging European cruise missiles were able to easily penetrate current Russian air defenses.

Most likely because they did not have the specs or complete specs for them and how they looked like on radar. There was an article somewhere that I can't find right now where something like this was said: Once a new weapon system is employed against RU or by RU against UA, it takes about two weeks to create countermeasures for it.

"Hard to argue EU part of NATO has better military capability than 20 years ago."

We are seeing Ukrainians regularly hitting russian redars and air defence. Whatever nato wasn't able to do in hte 90s the Ukrainians are fully capable of doing today, because they are doing it. And with lots of european help. So this is just outdated speculation you're doing.

We are seeing improved _US_ ISR in last 20 years enables UKR to hit RU assets. What UKR is fully capable of doing is follow up predominantly US supplied intel, especially for longer range / standoff strikes.

EU part of NATO has improved ISR (helios, sarlupe, copernicus etc) but nothing rivalling US tactical and strategic capabilities, i.e. as far as I know, there's no EU system that provides all weather real time targetting.

> People also forget NATO fought a much shitter/temu RU in Yugoslavia where NATO threw everything at even more legacy soviet systems. All of the awacs, prowlers, F117 barely chiped away at 20% of Yugoslav anti air, something like 700 harms were fired and destroyed less than handful of SA6 batteries. Hard to argue EU part of NATO has better military capability than 20 years ago

Likewise the reason why Russia couldn't steamroll Ukraine swiftly is because Ukraine anti air is very formidable (using Soviet hardware no less). That is why it is wrong to simply assume Russia is weak.

> That is why it is wrong to simply assume Russia is weak.

russia is weaker than they have been since 1991, possibly 1950.

There is a reason they are now delivering ammo using mules and actually attempting old school cavalry charges on horseback.

And it it's not because donkeys are better than the armoured, tracked towing tractors or because actual horses are better than tanks.

>horses are better than tanks

There's pics of UKR javalin calvary too. It's precisely because they're situationally better than tanks in certain combat conditions. For the same reason everyone is zipping around in dirt bikes and golf carts or UKR retiring M1 tanks from frontlines. Look up survivability onion, tanks/armor get detected and destroyed because they're too visible vs modern frontline battlefield recon. If you want to survive, have to move to smaller/more agile platforms to avoid detection in the first place. RU and UKR are both learning and adapting. It's reflection that last 50 years of doctorine is obsolete, aka everything EU military also hedged on. If shit ever hits the fan, NATO maybe donkeying as well.

> aka everything EU military also hedged on

I don't think that's true. As an example, Finland and French doctrine are very different. It's easier to test all Euopean nations diffrent doctrine and choose what works best (especially if countries from the Balkans add their grain of salt)

Imho that's where European defense industry (as a whole) is interesting. Because you have 5 competing IFV designs (well, over 15, but really, 5 different design that does different things). You also have multiple tanks (and AMX-10s), as well as a bunch of different drone constructors. Even in gun design you have multiple choices, andh while optics and optrionics are Thales', overall equipements are extremely distributed. Europe might find itself on the backfoot in case of an engagement, but i'm pretty sure it would bounce back quickly.

Yes, France have multiple different doctrines. It's most known one is the "Force de Frappe" [0], but the Legion have one, and if you talk about "doctrine d'emploi" every bit of equipment have one (the AMX-10 necessitate a doctrine d'emploi so different than regular MBT than the whole French cavalry have a different general doctrine than any other mechanized troups)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_dissuasion

Have my upvote, good reasoning.

Still sources like Covert Cabal and others do make me think it isn't only a tactical consideration the russians have made but also a reflection of the fact that they very much do see the end of their stockpile.

Overall your points are valid, but:

> There's pics of UKR javalin calvary too. It's precisely because they're situationally better than tanks in certain combat conditions.

It's a war of attrition, both sides are using whatever they can lay their hands on at this point.

The ISR environment is pretty saturated. Practically there's not much you can do to avoid detection.

I agree that mules / horses are better in certain situations, and not even considering cost. I believe even US 10th Mountain division still uses them

You really make the best point here. End of the day, the 1986-style WW2++ strategy is dead. Manned air superiority outside of the third world is dead.

The Russian failure is the exemplar. They were re-waging WW2, and they have little more than a lot of cooked tankers to show for it. Now we’re rolling with throwing prisoners into trenches to stop the maneuver warfare, because they can’t maneuver.

The US is probably in as bad of a condition. Given the poor performance of air power in Ukraine and the Trump/Putin driven destruction of world alignment, US naval power is questionable. Aircraft carriers will become ineffective as modern SAMs are sold on the market. Our submarine platforms are old, manufacturing is barely operational, and we’ll probably fire key individuals if we haven’t already.

Aircraft carriers were always a joke in a US vs. Soviet conflict. A carrier will help with third-world enemies that cannot threaten it. However, the Soviet Union had capable submarine forces as well as ship-launched (e.g. from Kirov class cruisers) as well as air-launched anti-ship missiles which in numbers can overwhelm the carriers air defense screen.

In WW3 the role of an aircraft carrier is to launch its airplanes exactly once, before it is sunk.

if donkey are superior, then explain why only after 3 years Putin used them, was Putin keeping them in reserve for the Berlin attack?

Let's be fair here. If we rightly mock all the silly *pravda sites, the mules aren't exactly reported in the serious press either.

It seems more likely that mules were used where they make sense: Supplying ammo to a trench deeply in the forest, where mules are the superior "technology". Then that observation was blown out of proportion.

Remember that "the Russians are fighting with shovels" was a slogan in 2022.

One problem with the digital age is you can find news to support any view, regardless of how disconnected from reality it may be. And enough people to echo such that one may not realize how ridiculous they sound.

> IMO there's a strong chance US would heavily restrict/limit F35 operations against RU. Because one shot down F35 by S400 let alone anything shittier completely evaporates narrative around 5th gen (and what that entails for IndoPac)

Israel's F-35 have being going in and out of Iran's airspace with impunity, so no, I don't think that is going to be an issue.