[ericmay]

But what’s the end game? China floods the U.S. with these surveillance balloons and then…?

The US can retaliate in other ways, sanctions, actually bombing China or perhaps the factory making these, going to war, etc.

The US can also easily develop a weapons platform to destroy these balloons.

[foverzar]

> actually bombing China

The US can't bomb anything that has air defense.

[species9606]

The US bombs the air defense, then it bombs whatever else.

[ericmay]

That’s obviously incorrect

[foverzar]

Has the US ever bombed a country with a GOOD air defense?

Aerial warfare (which is the US doctrine) is hard to conduct when there is a proper air defense. I'll be happy to be proven wrong by a specific example.

[ericmay]

> The US can't bomb anything that has air defense

Now it's:

> Has the US ever bombed a country with GOOD air defense, give a specific example

You should probably provide a timeline because I would just give examples from World War II or something and that would effectively "prove you wrong".

But my response was to your initial statement that the US can't bomb anything that has air defense, which is incorrect, as you know. Secondly you are probably thinking about bombing strictly in terms of aircraft bombing things, but you're neglecting that the US can launch missiles and take out air defense elements and so wondering whether the US can bomb a country with good air defense probably isn't the right question to ask because the US would destroy the air defense elements and then bomb the country.

But even so, yes the US can bomb a country with good air defense because the US has developed weapons platforms that can do so.

[foverzar]

> Now it's

Oh, don't get snarky. "Functional" air defence, whatever. It's just worth to filter out anything with the kind of air defence that's just dude with a machine-gun shooting in the air or something that wasn't operational or whatever.

Providing an example is always good for a substantial discussion.

> You should probably provide a timeline because I would just give examples from World War II or something and that would effectively "prove you wrong".

I don't suppose it's worth discussing anything that cannot be relatively safely considered as "modern warfare".

> which is incorrect, as you know

I don't, that's why I am asking.

> the US can launch missiles and take out air defence elements

Air defence is kinda also supposed to protect from missiles.

> the US has developed weapons platforms that can do so

Are you implying hypersonic missiles? They are relatively new and poorly tested, not even in serial production AFAIK.