Air superiority in the Cold War

[Amedeo]

3 hours ago, BeondTheGrave said:

By 1982 were comfortably in the era of the PGM, and PGMs offer you all kinds of options that older conventional, or even nuclear, weapons do not. To put it another way, the 1980s were not the 1950s. Nukes were certainly considered, and may well have been used, but there were methods of accomplishing the plan without them and in my mind I think that NATO and the WP would at least have started the war conventionally (minus a few gas attacks, but whats a bit of Sarin between friends?) 

I agree. But it's worth noting that, even during mid-late '80s, the air assets actually capable to use PGMs were in short supply, even in NATO air forces.

For example, the only planes (again, I'm speaking about the Central Europe theatre) that were able to autonomously (i.e without external designators) drop LGBs were USAF F-111s and F-4s. Other planes had no capability whatsoever or a theoretical capability but no stocks to speak of, IIRC. 

45 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I recall in the first Iraq war (or 1991 war or whatever its called), the British were greatly distressed by the loss of five Tornado aircraft during low-and-fast airfield denial missions. RAF losses-per-mission were running nine times higher than US losses-per mission. The RAF was using tactics straight from the war-with-Russia playbook. US at the time was relying on high altitude sorties accompanied by heavy air defense jamming.

It's probably not a case that also the tiny Italian air force contingent lost a Tornado to Iraqi AAA during a low altitude bombing pass. The point is that if you zoom low with many planes, you are bound to loose some to AAA and small arms fire, over dense concentration of troops. IIRC, RAF Tornados were then employed as medium altitude (laser) bomb trucks but, then, the aforementioned problem of insignificant stocks of PGSs presented itself.