It is precisely because of Ukraine's air defense capabilities and Russia's incompetence that Ukrainian airspace is still contested by both sides. It turns out that not even the Americans have ever had to deal militarily with a country that has capable modern air defenses. The last time this was done was 60 years ago when there was not even a SEAD doctrine.
You seem to be ignoring one fact: the Russians are much more powerful in air defense than the Ukrainians, and even if the Americans were capable of conducting a SEAD campaign, they would not have the full freedom they did in campaigns like DS. In fact, evaluating American performance in DS is not sensible to explain effective capabilities against a country like Russia and China.
Russia is as capable in air defense as China, if not more so, but the Chinese air force is much more capable than the VKS. A comparative point to explain the differences between Russian and Chinese military capabilities, but it turns out that the Russians actually have a capable strategic bomber force and a ballistic missile force, in addition to their own warships that can also launch long-range missiles.
To make it clearer, Ukraine uses dispersed bases spread throughout the country. With the help of Soviet-origin fighters that can operate even from irregular runways, it makes locating AFU aircraft even more difficult, therefore, an extremely difficult task to locate any fighters inside Ukraine while still at their bases, especially given Russia's limited space surveillance capabilities. Even the F-16 will be
to operate on highways with limited support from the ground crew.
The Russians would attack NATO's force multiplier assets. First, their support aircraft and force multipliers such as AWACS/AEW&C, REVO, JSTARS, ELINT/SIGINT, among others, need to operate from a land-based base, not accepting any runway (they need to be long runways) or any support infrastructure. All these bases in Europe are already monitored and recognized by the Russians, who could carry out preparatory strikes and precede any attack against Russia. The advantage over Russia would diminish sharply without these force multiplier aircraft, leveling the air combat, becoming what we see in Ukraine.
This is the biggest misunderstanding about the Russian doctrine other than A2/AD that China has followed.
Russian forces are organized around strategic offensive/defensive operations that do not suggest the intention of retreating into a defensive bubble and being swallowed up by a US-led aerospace attack. To nullify this advantage of American aerospace power, they would preemptively strike any major air base that is the center of operations for these force multiplier aircraft. They would use their strategic aviation (LRA - Long Range Aviation) composed of strategic bombers that can fire both the Kinzhal and long-range cruise missiles, in addition to the MiG-31K to employ the Kinzhal. The VMF would also use its ships to launch long-range cruise missiles and the Oreshnik (a missile previously banned by the INF treaty) as a complementary ground component of the entire Russian conventional strike force. This would make things even more difficult for NATO.
The difference between a Russian attack on NATO and a NATO attack on Russia is that unlike the US, all of Europe lacks air defenses, so the chances of NATO's air defense systems being saturated are extremely high. NATO certainly has air defenses, largely because the US has 480 Patriots divided into eight brigades. No NATO country has a defense comparable to the US, much less Russia, which has more than the US in just one branch (VKS), around 582 long-range SAMs divided into: 160 S-300PS (RS-SA-10B Grumble); 150 S-300PM1/PM2 (RS-SA-20 Gargoyle); 20S-300V (RS-SA-12 Gladiator/Giant); 6 S-350 Vityaz (RS-SA-28); 248 S-400 (RS-SA-21 Growler). I don't need to say that the US would never put all the Patriots in Europe, they have global theaters distributed to demand SAM systems such as in Asia, such as South Korea, Guam and Japan, and the Middle East. So do the math.
I'm not the one saying that NATO's air defenses are deficient, they themselves admit it after the events that occurred in Ukraine. American and European ships could certainly extend land-based air defense, but that would be a waste of resources, making NATO ships less involved in naval operations and more involved in defensive operations against Russian missiles. If they really wanted to defend themselves against the Russians, they could count on additional naval help, but that would eliminate the advantage NATO would have in naval warfare. Simply put, Not giving up filling the VLS with anti-ship and land attack missiles to fill it only with SAMs is a complete waste. They would never do that.
It is worth noting that Russian doctrine is different from that of the West, especially the US. They had their doctrine validated in the Yom Kippur War, see Operation Model 5 or the Air Battle of Mansoura.
Mobile batteries are difficult to locate, designate and destroy. Of course, since Yom Kippur, a lot has changed in terms of air defense and SEAD/DEAD, but even so, the concept is still valid to be observed in Soviet/Russian doctrine.
It is worth noting that even before the fall of the USSR, the Russians were already aware of the great American aerospace power, they could never match this capability, the approach was a mix of a great variety and scope of SAM systems with an aviation capable of decisively confronting American aerospace power.
This is still valid today. The VKS, together with air defenses, would be able to resist American aerospace power or limit the damage from US aerospace power. The Russians were never able to achieve air superiority against the Americans, the doctrinal conception predicted this, but air parity was achievable, which would stimulate what we are seeing in Ukraine today, where each air force would only be able to provide marginal support to the ground forces, incapable of changing the static front of the war. And this is even worse for the Americans, because they rely on the USAF to achieve air superiority and advance on Russian ground formations. Thus, the marginal support of the USAF would have especially degraded the ground operations of the US Army.
I will not make comparisons here off topic, but to be frank, in a Russia vs. US war, the certainty of American victory is almost certain. That is why the Russians trust their nuclear arsenal. This does not prevent us from critically assessing that the Americans could not even achieve the advantage that throughout these 30 years of military advantage was a prior consideration in war exercises: being able to gain air superiority against their enemies.
To summarize what I said, the Russians could not possibly want to achieve air superiority against the US; in fact, it is more of a strategy of damage limitation, counterattacks and preemptive strikes, which has been maintained since the Soviets correctly assessed Operation Model 5 or the Air Battle of Mansoura. Of course, we can also assess, for example, Israel's effective SEAD in the Battle of the Bekaa Valley, but in that battle there was Arab recklessness and arrogance. The accumulation of SAMs had been occurring since June 1981, and the operators had become arrogant enough to get used to the IAF's UAV reconnaissance flights and did not camouflage their systems or constantly change position. The IAF began conducting reconnaissance with UAVs and training its pilots in the Negev Desert against SAM positions identical to those found in Lebanon. As early as 1973, Israel managed to cross the river because Egypt was foolish enough to advance beyond the cover of its own air defenses and faced two realities in the air battle against the IAF in which it lost 28 aircraft in a single day. Israel managed to end up entrenching itself west of the canal, which was at the cost to Egypt of having advanced beyond the cover of its own air defenses.
