That doesn’t seem like a lot of them should a full scale war hit the US.
I don’t know that much about their originally-intended role, but my guess is that they probably would have been okay.
Ukraine’s having to lean heavily on artillery, including both tube and rocket artillery, because they don’t have a huge air force. The US has an overwhelming amount of air power. I don’t know about hypothetical peer- and near-peer conflicts, but if you look at past US conflicts, the US tends to favor a pattern that looks something like this:
Destroy air defenses.
Strike targets that can be identified up with air power.
Send troops in carefully to take ground, relying upon air support.
The problem is that Ukraine’s missing that air power element, so they’re relying on using classes of weapons that were intended to play a smaller role for the US. Ukraine managed to burn through the 155mm artillery shells that the US could spare because the US did not expect to have the kind of level of reliance on tube artillery that Ukraine does.
The last really major US operation against intact air defenses was probably Desert Storm. The Operations Room has a pretty good YouTube video that highlights the opening of the conflict, which was almost entirely handled from the air.
Surface-to-surface missiles – Tomahawks – did play a role there in targeting air defenses, but they weren’t the primary tool being used. The US also had stealthy aircraft (F-117s) that penetrated air defenses, aircraft launching weapons from standoff range (B-52s) firing ALCMs from standoff range, where SAMs couldn’t hit them, a lot of jamming and decoy capacity helping Wild Weasel aircraft to fly in and hit air defenses with anti-radiation missiles (though to be fair, Ukraine has some of these too), and so forth.
I don’t know that much about their originally-intended role, but my guess is that they probably would have been okay.
Ukraine’s having to lean heavily on artillery, including both tube and rocket artillery, because they don’t have a huge air force. The US has an overwhelming amount of air power. I don’t know about hypothetical peer- and near-peer conflicts, but if you look at past US conflicts, the US tends to favor a pattern that looks something like this:
Destroy air defenses.
Strike targets that can be identified up with air power.
Send troops in carefully to take ground, relying upon air support.
The problem is that Ukraine’s missing that air power element, so they’re relying on using classes of weapons that were intended to play a smaller role for the US. Ukraine managed to burn through the 155mm artillery shells that the US could spare because the US did not expect to have the kind of level of reliance on tube artillery that Ukraine does.
The last really major US operation against intact air defenses was probably Desert Storm. The Operations Room has a pretty good YouTube video that highlights the opening of the conflict, which was almost entirely handled from the air.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRgfBXn6Mg
Surface-to-surface missiles – Tomahawks – did play a role there in targeting air defenses, but they weren’t the primary tool being used. The US also had stealthy aircraft (F-117s) that penetrated air defenses, aircraft launching weapons from standoff range (B-52s) firing ALCMs from standoff range, where SAMs couldn’t hit them, a lot of jamming and decoy capacity helping Wild Weasel aircraft to fly in and hit air defenses with anti-radiation missiles (though to be fair, Ukraine has some of these too), and so forth.
Very interesting. Appreciate the effort that went into both of these replies. Thanks!