FDR saw the wars coming and was determined to get a corps of experienced aviators. He couldn't do that in Spain but he could in China. The combat experienced avaitors formed the basis of the US naval training instructors and it's a key reason why the US had very high success rates in encounters with Japanese Zero's. They understood the lack of armor, climbing, diving abilities, etc. It also enabled a new splurge of aircraft designs.
I think we are seeing the same with armed drones today. This is the testing ground and I believe the first country to really digest and employ the lessons here will change the balance of power in the air.
Sort of, but not exactly. The AVG was based in Burma to keep the Burma Road into China open. They only faced the Japanese Army aircraft. The fighters were a mix of Ki-27 Nate fighters which had fix landing gear and an open cockpit and early models of the Ki-43 Oscar. The Chinese did capture a Zero almost intact before Pearl Harbor, but it took more than six months to get back to the US. A Zero that was recovered almost intact near Dutch Harbor, Alaska during the Midway operation (the attack on Alaska was a diversion to try and lure the US fleet away from the Hawaiian islands) was evaluated before the Chinese captured Zero.
The AVG did find that high kinetic tactics would beat the Japanese fighters rather than dog fighting them. Separately the USN fighter pilots began to figure out that the F4F Wildcat was a poor dog fighter against Japanese fighters, but if a pilot kept the speed of the encounter up the Japanese planes couldn't maneuver.
John Thatch is credited with coming up with the Thatch Weave
Thach Weave - Wikipedia
But that's probably not very relevant to this conversation.
I cannot help but laugh at the American posters who want a "fair" vote for Crimea, when their own electoral system is being compromised by the day with trumpers who gauge electoral integrity by the winner and actively circumvent the courts when they cannot compromise them.
It will be quite the irony if UKR becomes a functioning democracy and the USA degenerates into a fascist autocracy a la Russia
If the US went fascist it will be very grim for the rest of the world.
"Losing to Nato is more honorable" is stretching. There's no indication that Putin is considering driving that narrative vs escalating to triple down.
You know better than anyone what Putin did was idiotic and doesn't have the numbers. Have we seen in the past 8 months any shred of strategic brilliancy from the man?
The only shred of brilliancy I find from Putin is all the prewar stuff. Driving polarization in thr Donbas area using propaganda and fake news, driving polarization in the US. Almost had a president willing to pull out of Nato. Making sure EU is very energy dependent on Russia, and strategically became more and more sanction proof.
However everything after the invasion started was nothing but stupidity. So we are now all hoping this stupid person will one day wake up and do what is best for his country while sacrificing his own power and admit stupidity...kind of a stretch.
Putin is a politician and a chess master in that world. On military strategy, he's an idiot. Just like Elon Musk is brilliant at innovating technology but has a horrible track record on social media, putting his foot in his mouth frequently.
Putin did the invasion of Ukraine as a political move, and it would have been if Ukraine collapsed under the pressure. When Ukraine decided to put up a fight, Russia was toast. The Russians brought the wrong army that was too small for the task it ended up with.
Your observation reminded me of this upcoming SCOTUS case:
If the court upholds the rogue ‘Independent State Legislature’ theory, it would put the US squarely on the path to authoritarianism
www.theguardian.com
The implications are terrifying, but odds are high it will lose at SCOTUS. The fact this is in front of the court at all is way too close.
Brilliant in the eyes of fools who could not see through the lie that 100k troops massing on the UKr border was a prelude to invasion.
I knew the invasion was coming and the Russians were in trouble because they didn't have enough troops. No army in history has done a build up like the Russians did without launching an invasion.
www.thebulwark.com
www.pravda.com.ua
www.nationalww2museum.org
