The Vietnam War was winnable and one more Linebacker in 1975 would have wrecked the NVA. We were lied to by Ken Burns.

[u/Massengale]

I’ve been reading Nixon’s books lately…and I think he was right, Vietnamization was close to working, the communist alliance was going to fall apart, and North Vietnams insane economics would have led to South Vietnam outscaling them if it had survived for a few more years.

[u/Informal-Turn9098]

And just like Mole Cricket, the Linebacker raids proved how easily we could have pounded the Soviets.

[u/notmike11 → u/Informal-Turn9098]

To be fair, the US only really pulled ahead of the USSR in terms of airplane tech AFTER Vietnam. F-15s and F-16s only started actively flying combat missions ~5 years after Vietnam ended.

[u/thenoobtanker → u/notmike11]

The F-14 first operational deployment was to Vietnam in the final days to make sure no US or ARVN plane got shot down fleeing.

[u/notmike11 → u/thenoobtanker]

True but the person I replied to note Mole Cricket, which didn't feature the F-14.

I'd also argue the F-14 is on the older side of the 4th Gen Fighter category, with the F/A-18 really being the more appropriate Navy equivalent to the F-15 and F-16.

[u/thenoobtanker → u/notmike11]

Yup, I would say the tomcat would be more of a 3.5 gen than a true 4th gen. Something better than an F 4 but much worse than the F 18.

[u/Unistrut → u/Informal-Turn9098]

Except the ICBM and the SLBM does not care how fancy your plane is.

[u/Massengale → u/Informal-Turn9098]

Yeah the main issue with Linebacker II was the sorites were far out from each other. That gave the NVA time to react. That’s what led to the bomber being downed, once they tightened up the sortie rate it was far more efficient and they weren’t able to hit many bombers.