Originally Posted by
Eclan
If Obama manages to start his war and the Russians wade in, it will be interesting to see how the western combat aircraft fare in a real air-to-air war.
You can be sure this simply won't happen. The Russians are not stupid and Obama will also make sure upfront that nothing gets out of hand. If the Russians themselves are manning S-300s at present I suspect even for those they will find an agreement upfront.
This thing isn't important enough for either side to risk anything serious. Remember how reluctant Russia was to give asylum to Snowden since they didn't want to harm their relationship with the US too much?
Also both sides know very well that a couple of air strikes won't make any difference to the outcome of this.
This is about Face Saving a bit on both sides. Obama will fire his couple of Tomahawks (and enable a real world test of the X47B
) after having informed the Russians upfront about it. The Russians will scream and shout a bit and also protest in the UN S/C and after those two/three days of air/cruise missile strikes Business will continue as usual.
Israel doesn't seem to be willing to get involved -which they are usually not too reluctant about. As others have pointed out this is the strongest indication we can get that a protracted civil war in Syria is probably the preferred state of affairs by Israel and the US.
Edit:
After decades of simulation and "Red Air", the first time in a long while for real air warfare against current generation Eastern BLOC aircraft flown by pilots who know what they're doing.
Out of curiosity: Where is this eastern BLOC and which countries belong to it? What is their global goal and Ideology?
Did you get the news what happened during the last 25 years?
If you are talking about Russia: Yes they are still a Power to be reckoned with. They have national interests like other Countries do. Maybe they still have somewhat more Toys and influence to foster them then many other Countries. They are also probably not a shining example of an open democracy. But I don't see much efforts by them to conquer the world and invade into foreign Countries against their will.