gambit
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Sorry, but this is not a good argument/criticism of US/NATO power.
What you 'think' about the Iraqi military came from the benefits of hindsight that the Iraqi military was defeated. I doubt that you were around when Desert Shield was created but if you were, would you have thought the same way, that the US/NATO would defeat the Iraqi military with so little casualties and weeks? No, you would not have thought so.
So what are we to make of Desert Storm? US/NATO airpower preceded the ground war. Desert Storm air campaign was about four weeks. When I got orders to deploy to Desert Storm, we already knew the air campaign would last weeks. How many depends on battle damages data, but we did planned on weeks. The battle damage data and assessments were what you left out in trying to defend the Russian campaign. Could the Iraq ground war started at the three weeks mark? Yes. Could it have been at the 8 or 12 weeks, or even six months point? Yes. But after four weeks, US/allies commanders decided that the Iraqi military was sufficiently degraded to begin the ground war. So just because we took four weeks to soften up the Iraqi ground forces does not mean the air campaign was incompetently executed.
Damage assessment was not a thought out process when planning began for Desert Storm. The intelligence community with its high-speed surveillance technology, thought they had a plan. The community disregarded the traditional art of damage assessment (analysis of pilot reports, gunsight photos, follow up reconnaissance images/reports, and human resources intelligence (HUMINT) that trickled in from behind enemy lines) and tried to make it into a science relying primarily on national reconnaissance. It was not, however, prepared for the pace and rate of sortie generation that occurred. When intelligence analysts did get timely products, they did not have vital information such as time over target or desired mean points of impact (DMPI) which are critical when assessing damage.
What happened was that the BDA was too slow in comparison to how the air campaign was going. Further, there was a language problem.
Gen. Schwarzkopf, the Joint Force Commander for Desert Storm, once remarked during an evening intelligence update "well, if we knocked out one span of a four-span bridge so that anything that tried to cross fell into the Euphrates, you intelligence guys would tell me the bridge was only twenty-five percent damaged."
In the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War: Final Report to Congress, 1992, the damage assessment process at the theater level was characterized as suffering from a lack of adequate systems, procedures, and manpower and had difficulty trying to keep pace with the size speed and scope of the air campaign.
What does %25 damaged really mean in actual combat situations? For the front line, that bridge was effectively KIA-ed but the language in the report was misleading. In the final analysis, US/Allies airpower in Desert Storm remains THE standard for other air forces to follow, IF they can, that US/Allies airpower in Desert Storm were not incompetently executed but as yrs later proved, we were too competent.
In every war, every military looks for innovations from the combatants, and in this case, the world's militaries had Desert Storm level expectations for one combatant: Russia. And Russia failed, specifically the VKS failed -- miserably. There is no longer any valid comparison between Desert Storm and now. Russia war doctrines have airpower in a limited role, what we call 'airborne artillery'. Imagine an air force comprises mostly of A-10s. That is how Russia sees its airpower -- as a component of the ground forces. And even in this limited role, the VKS still failed as the Russian Army suffered one tank loss after another. The VKS is so bad in Ukraine that everyone falls back to Desert Storm, meaning Russia as a major military is no longer a valid example to follow but NOT to follow.
