[Prbeek]

Take Vietnam for instance where the Soviets supplied the Vietcongs with AD systems and at times manned them The Americans lost over 10,000 aircrafts over a 10 year period which is an average of 3 per day.

The US airforce cannot survive the attrition rate that a war with Russia or China would bring.

[elashri]

For completeness most of these losses were UAVs and Helicopters. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the...

[refurb]

While 10,000 sounds like a lot, about 25% were accidents, and 75% in combat, so 7,500.

That's 7,500 aircraft lost over 5.25 million sorties, or 14 lost per 1,000 sorties.

The loss rate was 5 times higher in Korea and 25 times higher in WW2.

And as the other comment mentioned, most were helicopters (5,600) and UAV's (1,000). Only 3,400 fixed wing, manned aircraft were lost.

[dylan604]

After reading this, I thought the opening music for Top Gun was about to start playing

[pjc50]

> The US airforce cannot survive the attrition rate that a war with Russia or China would bring.

Nuclear exchange by ICBM would destroy most aircraft, their crews, their maintenance crews, and the factories for the replacement. There will be no dogfights.