I mean Putin will spin everything as "the West did it" anyway, so it really does not matter who pushes that button. I also seriously wonder why we don't have US/NATO air forces over Ukraine for this reason.
Because footage of a downed F-22 and it's captive pilot would be an unspeakable PR disaster relative to the comparatively mild military benefit. Wars aren't, and really never have been, won by blowing stuff up.
> That's a huge simplification. Blowing stuff up in a strategic way can certainly help win a war.
And losing public support for an effort via an embarassing disaster can just as certainly lose it, which was my point.
Yes yes yes, blow stuff up. Take territory, shoot people, yada yada. At some point that has to happen for a "war" to be a "war". But at the end of the day the winner is essentially always predetermined by economics and politics. Making deployment decisions in the absence of those considerations is generally how one loses wars.
I don't know that the electorate that twice elected the man that said "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay?" would actually be all that bothered.
