I don't want to fall into the trap of "those guys couldn't even beat Ukraine" when what they couldn't beat was the Ukraine, and all of NATO's logistics and reserve weaponry. And all that crap hasn't beaten the Russians yet either.
That's all true, but as has been mentioned by a few people, they didn't beat Ukraine before Ukraine had NATO logistics and reserve weaponry to rely on. Maybe the NATO commitments to supply Ukraine were executed much faster than I'd expect, but I'm guessing that the first few weeks were mostly done with systems on-hand that their troops were already trained with. Further, even given all of the western support they've received, for a lot of good reasons they have not gotten our best and most capable systems. That the limited, outdated, and export-model stuff we've sent them has been sufficient to stall the Russian invasion for so long is telling. If Ukraine was fielding modern NATO weapons systems across the board instead of a hodgepodge of export models and hand-me-downs, I would think it would only serve to magnify Russian losses and take the fight into Russian territory in a big way.
Sure, "those guys couldn't even beat Ukraine" is not strictly correct, but even considering the support we've given them, prior to 2021 I would have expected Russia to have the resources and strength to march over them in a matter of weeks. They didn't.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the USAF couldn't have taken down the Ukrainian air defenses B2's F35's and F22's would have *expletive deleted*ed them up, but not being as good as the USAF isn't automatically *expletive deleted*it tier. I am saying that if we had to try and provide CAS with A-10s and F/A-18's, against an enemy well supplied with Stingers, it might be ugly.
Right, but Russia does have something like 10 active SU-57s, and claims to have used a handful to attack targets in Ukraine (though they may keep them over Russia and just fire weapons over the border). Saying that all they have to play with are equivalents of A-10s and F/A-18's isn't quite accurate. Also, if their concern was just MANPADs (i.e., assuming they were able to run effective SEAD on the bigger AA installations), I'd expect Russia to be doing high altitude bombing all day long.
I'm not claiming Russia is *expletive deleted*it-tier, I'm saying they're not nearly as strong as I used to think they were. You probably already had a better take on their capabilities before this conflict than I did, so maybe you weren't as surprised as me that Ukraine is still standing. I used to figure Russia was #2 or #3 in conventional military capability. Now ... maybe 9 or 10?