I meant vs the USAF, with modern stealth multi role jets such as the F35. We can target their anti-air for long range GMLRS artillery / precision artillery like Excalibur, or with cruise missiles like tomahawks. The SEAD / DEAD missions seem quite appropriate for F35s.

Though I don’t full agree with Russia only using ground based air defense as the few newer generation jets Russia have are shooting down a lot of Ukrainian jets. They fly higher, faster, and can both lock and engage Ukrainian jets before the Ukrainian have even detected them.

Well, to be fair the the Ukrainians, they're flying old old Flankers and Fulcrums. Compared to Su-35 etc, it's no contest.

I think that the USAF will have its hands full overcoming Russia's A2AD environment, assuming it's set up and competently managed. The range on S300/S400 makes it hard to use anything other than Tomahawks and stealth aircraft to target. It definitely won't be like Baghdad during DS.

In the first 48 hours of the Afghanistan war, a tomahawk was launched, on average, every 12 seconds. To pivot back to near peer threats like china, the US Marine Corps now has a ground based tomahawk launcher[1] they can setup on small islands. Also, the US has a crapload more stealth aircraft than the Russians and the maintenance is actually performed on them.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/first-marine-corps-tom...

You're seriously comparing the air defense capability of Afghanistan against a near peer? I love the Tomahawk, and I think it still has some use until LRSO comes into inventory in significant numbers, but I think it's going to struggle against China if it comes to that. Even with saturation attacks, you'll have to have a lot of luck and careful planning to overwhelm China's A2AD.

HARM are operating at basically few percent of their capabilities, due to

- old C versions from early 90s - only working on pre-programmed target mode - no targeting pods like AN/ASQ-213

Indeed. Very little of what the US has sent Ukraine is the latest and greatest, though I’d expect that to change in the near term future.

Nobody's realistically trying to take down the Russian air defense network because they're not conducting strikes into Russian territory.

They would take down short range AA if they could because it would permit the use of ground attack aircraft.