Quote Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey View Post

The air superiority issue may not be appreciated by poopy. Or maybe by me.
The lack of air superiority in Ukraine means the RAF is hobbled, which in turn has dramatic negative effects on their ground troops' potential.
I'd presume that Wagner doesn't have robust air defenses to stop a sortie of attack planes. But I may be wrong.
Under the assumption, an air force would just stomp a ground force.
A powerful air force could seriously damage a ground force, but even it wouldn't wipe out a 25-50k size force in three days. In Iraq War 1, I very clearly recall the Allies having air superiority and precision bombers. They were bombing Iraqi ground forces for a month straight before the tankers even switched on their engines. They also blew up some infrastructure, but a significant part of their mission was to soften up the ground forces. Iraqi losses for the entire conflict were in the tens of thousands, so the math of doing 25k worth of damage in 3 days doesn't really add up.

And I doubt the Russian air force has that kind of strength sitting around waiting for someone to drive down the road to Moscow anyways. There's certainly no evidence they do, and what evidence that does exist strongly suggests they don't.

But let's imagine they did, and were just saving it for a surprise strike. The idea the Wagner Group would just be sitting ducks doesn't make sense either. Modern ground forces nowadays have surface-to-air missile capability as well as anti-air flak guns. They certainly did ok against those helicopters. And planes flying at a high altitude is not a guarantee that they can't be shot down. SAMs can hit planes at 30k feet easily.