Modern air wins, absolutely no question. Look at the gulf war. Baghdad, a HIGHLY defended city with an insanely sophisticated AA network got smashed to rubble and their air force destroyed and routed because the US got the leash taken off for a minute.
Air dominance wins fights period. As long as those WWII boys have radios and maps, they just sit back and watch the fireworks.
WWII units collapse on both sides. Modern ground forces win easily.
The problem with WWII units is are they manned with modern or legacy personnel? If modern, not even your best WarThunder leakier or DCS rivet-counter is going to be able to keep 1940s tech going. If you use legacy personnel, how do you motivate them to fight once they see what we’ve done with the world they left us?
The modern air force would wipe out the ww2 air force, break for lunch, then the ground forces would start getting pummeled by precision munitions fired from outside the range they can retaliate at.
Meanwhile, ww2 ground forces would be very bored.
21st Century Air Force. Modern ground forces rely on air superiority to win.
The BUFF should have been on both sides
Modern airforce will result in ww2 airforce not existing, so what you’re left with is ww2 ground + modern air vs modern ground, which I’m sure favors the ww2 ground forces who have proper air support.
Edit: nevermind, I totally agree
Are we talking about same amount WW2 vs modern, or WW2 amount of units vs modern amount of units?
WW2 used huge amount of everything.
I think it’s only fair we respect the number of units they had
Depends on how many missiles each side can afford.
On one hand, modern AA is extremely good, and if the ground force is peppered with SAMs and forward recon/detection, a modern airforce will struggle mightily, depending on the terrain and intelligence.
On the other hand… can the bombers just launch a boatload of cruise missiles, spotted by the WWII ground forces? This is even more expensive and impractical, but it would work.
So I think modern ground wins with a sane budget, and modern air wins with an “infinite” ammo budget.
Gut feeling is modern ground force, as that’s what takes and holds territory at the end of the day, and Ukraine shows that modern AA makes things quite dangerous for modern air units to operate.
Modern Airforce would wipe WW2 airforce like it was nothing. They wouldn’t even see the F-35 or out maneuver their missiles. Remember they had no plane based radar, all visual, they wouldn’t even know they were already dead.
Modern AA could hinder modern Airforce but the WW2 AF will eventually have to run Sorties into enemy territory or they are just patrolling above their own forces not doing a whole lot. There is a reason modern doctrine starts with establishing air superiority.
There is nothing modern in airforce in Ukraine in either side
I would argue drones are quite a modern addition to air forces.
Yes BUT! The drones they are currently using aren’t really an air force. If they’d be using Reapers and the like yeah, but BabaYaga is not really an air force. I guess we are a bit splitting the hair though here, we could nitpick forever!
Hey, Russia had an Su-57 and an S-70! …I mean, they had to get the fighter to shoot the UAV down, but still, they were there!
Yeah, but it’s not in use in Ukraine (like it would work or make any difference lol, pretty much like the Armata tank). Nothing either side is using was developed in 21st century. Late 20th at most.
F-117 (which is still 20th century but more advanced than cold war era stuff they are using now) and F-35 would shred any AA, in my armchair general opinion of course.
There are hundreds of primitive suicide planes made of plywood and cardboard that fly every day and do damage on both sides. You can’t get more ww2 than that and ecomonically impossible to use modern aa against them, one missile costs more than a hundred probably. There is nothing modern about this war.
I wanna say right but methinks left would be more fun
