This is an idiotic argument. Ukraine has one third of all western AD in Europe and it is still unable to fully defend against Russian drones and missiles. Smaller, lower flying targets are harder to detect and hit than big manned jets. They are also more expendable so you can afford to use them more recklessly. Drones are regularly shot down in great numbers or brought down by EW, if this happened to manned aircraft it would be a disaster. If the US tried using its jets against any country with halfway decent AD its pilots who took years and billions of dollars to train would start dying like flies, not to mention aircraft being destroyed that is thousands of times more expensive than a drone, and there would be the mother of all scandals back home. The US has no capacity to absorb real losses, it’s why they only pick on the most defenseless countries and non-state actors.
Removed by mod
This is an idiotic argument. Ukraine has one third of all western AD in Europe and it is still unable to fully defend against Russian drones and missiles. Smaller, lower flying targets are harder to detect and hit than big manned jets. They are also more expendable so you can afford to use them more recklessly. Drones are regularly shot down in great numbers or brought down by EW, if this happened to manned aircraft it would be a disaster. If the US tried using its jets against any country with halfway decent AD its pilots who took years and billions of dollars to train would start dying like flies, not to mention aircraft being destroyed that is thousands of times more expensive than a drone, and there would be the mother of all scandals back home. The US has no capacity to absorb real losses, it’s why they only pick on the most defenseless countries and non-state actors.