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fsckboyyesterday at 10:31 PM0 repliesview on HN

>America hasn’t faced a peer-level, modern military since the Korean War. For seventy years, it has specialized in "wars of choice" against overmatched opponents

America has not faced any wars in its own "theater", it's own backyard; rather, it has "chosen" to fight wars that seemed important enough to travel halfway round the world, bringing lots of stuff. One of the American military's strengths is logistics, both getting there and on the battlefield.

>mistaking uncontested airspace for actual invincibility.

America pioneered and still leads in combined arms fighting doctrine and capabilities, and that basically requires air superiority as the first step. There's no mistake, it is creating uncontesed airspace (which starts with creating the capabilites) that enables victory at low casualty rates. It's not so much invincibility as "convincing vincibility" of opponents.