Of course, to do so would not be insurmountable but the costs are prohibitively expensive in the short to medium term.
I agree! QED it is not "insurmountable".
As for the benign "air environment" and UAVs - people forget that they flew quite successfully over Bosnia/Kosovo with the threat from MiG29, Super Galeb and Orao, then later over Iraq before they buried their MiG29s, MiG25s, MiG23s and Mirage F1s in the desert in 2003! These things have been flying globally with the CIA for well over 15 years! So the current Afghan use is a poor comparator.
LJ
PS. Anyone noted that there's no money?
