Additionally, Rafales are more than a strong contender to Russia's Su35. A dozen Reapers too, for good measure.
France isn't the world's fifth military power and one of the biggest seller of weapons for no reason.
The USSR beat the much better Nazi tanks through sheer numbers, at some point the numbers advantage overcomes the quality advantage.
The Germans thought so highly of the T-34 that they thought of cloning it, but came to the conclusion that designing a new tank to counter it was in the end a more feasible idea. This process eventually resulted in the Panther, often thought to be the best tank of the entire war. Although in practice it was beset by reliability issues, and of course it was too little too late in general by then.
Getting back to the original topic, the lesson seems that for tank vs tank combat, large numbers of good enough tanks win the day. Now, the T-72 did disastrously poorly in the Gulf war, but OTOH apparently 'domestic' USSR T-72's have better armor to begin with than the export versions used in Iraq, and further upgraded ones with more armor and modern sensors might be a much harder nut to crack.
Tanks are not used for that anymore, they are used as little fortresses in cities, but fighting on a open field..well you have seen what happened in the first and second iraq war.
Tanks are deathtraps in cities. Attackers trap them with obstacles and then attack with RPGs. See the footage on YouTube in Chechnya or Syria.
In the open battlefield as in Iraq 1 (especially) and 2 they were very effective although of course airpower is the key factor.
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Primer-on-Urban-Op...
>In the open battlefield as in Iraq 1 (especially) and 2 they were very effective
That was artillery and aircraft's, mostly NOT Tank VS Tank.
> https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Primer-on-Urban-Op...
To quote from this book, about regarding how badly they faired in Chechnya (as mentioned above):
> High casualties, massive collateral damage, and heavy losses in vehicles and equipment all point to the apparent folly of using tanks in the urban fight. This chapter will discuss the 1995 battle for Grozny and examine why the Russian armor did not achieve the desired results.
So... the argument is that "Russians don't know how to use tanks". I don't find this argument particularly persuasive.
It's true that up-armourmed Abrams in Fallujah proved effective against RPG-7s (as mentioned in your link). But the RPG-29 was used in Syria successfully against them, and (more often) by Hezbollah against the Merkava tanks.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/russia-rpg-threat-to-mode...
France has no A10s and S500 allows Russia to deny airspace to it anyway.
It depends on the theatre. At sea, probably, in a nuclear exchange France has sufficient deterrent capability. But in a land war, tank on tank the way God meant it to be, France’s 200 tanks are no match for Russia’s thousands.
Remember purchasing power parity. Russia may be poorer than France, but it’s stuff costs a lot less too.