>>652991
You're thinking area denial as a viable air defense strategy. It's not.
There are multiple points that are valid, like the rather atrocious civie/enemy kill rate, but not moving in to an area that you sucessfully deny the enemy is not a sound idea, especially if it gives you massive advantages.
Lets construct a scenario here:
You're thinking about defensive, not offensive wars. With your location, you're susceptible to a russian attack, followed by insurgent mussie forces, followed by China and at the end of the line a US attack.
I'm deliberately leaving out the EU, as fun as
>muh belkan clay!
memeing might be, german boomers are militant pacifists and most of them like neither the syria conflict involvement, the afghanistan conflict involvement or the KFOR involvement of the Bundeswehr. Mali has not made huge waves here yet, so not a lot of complaints about that one.
Now, shooting down enemy aircraft:
Very very difficult if they have standoff HARM missiles. The moment you switch on the radar to search for aircraft you can't see/hear, you're susceptible to a HARM missile. IR missiles, mostly MANPADs, are only viable to 6km height, roundabout. Bombers at 10k would operate with impunity.
>strategic bombing
war is logistics, and logistics are killed by strategic bombing. This is not debatable, anything else is bait.
>CAS
US infantry has been known to have a lot of experience, but not a great training track record compared to EU forces, partially because the amount of capability they entrust their low level enlisted. However, the elevated gun position of an aircraft is immensely useful, as even special forces were very open to the idea of using an armed SuperTucano as CAS - they really liked the loiter time too. The main advantage of a pilot in the loop is the fact that a pilot is still more capable of differentiating between friendlies and enemies than an AI - My guess would be that Air superiority will be fought out by drones in the future, while CAS due to its danger close properties will be handled by humans for some time to come.
>precision bombing
sure you can niggerrig a glide bomb, but if you fire a rocket on the ground while the enemy has air superiority, there is a high likelyhood of them spotting the exhaust plume, following it to its origin and hellfireing that spot. Reapers are cheap.
>aerial recon drones
LockMart recently lost one to Iran, some super secret squirrel one from Skunkworks. The Iranians supposedly just spoofed the GPS. How the drone did not continue on its INS, i do not know.
>patrolling over wide areas
>hungary
correct me if i'm wrong, but your country is fairly big.
Fighter planes are a tool for show of force. Buzz someone with a fighter jet or intercept them, they'll stop doing stupid things, like flying in to your country in a Tu 95. It's not MAD, its more showing "I have this universally respected tool of air warfare. Now stop, or else."
You could send up a heap of drones, but the moment the russians with their faible for EWarfare figure out how to mess with them, you're fucked.
Same if they happen upon a situation that the designer did not anticipate - the drone will just do nothing in the best of cases.
SItuation unclear? A pilot will investigate and act in the spirit of his orders, while having a tactical and strategic picture in mind.
The drone will most likely be unpredictable.
>look at map to make sure i didn't mess up the size and neighbours of your country
how the FUCK is Romania bigger than Hungary? Jesus Christ, are you even relevant to anyone these days? Austria seems bigger and literally no one gives a fuck about them.
At any rate, I wouldn't worry about anyone invading you, you're too close for comfort to poland for russia( not that the VDV wouldn't pull a Crimea on you guys if they wanted), You're already practically assimilated in to the EU, which takes the US off the table and China does not give a fuck about you yet. They'll probably get along better with Romania at any rate.
So as far as your defense strategy is concerned, integration in to EU defense is probably your best bet, since if the russians decide to come, you'll either be fighting on a frontline outside of your country, supplied by EU countries as well, or taken over in a 12h or less raid by VDV in plainclothes/greenbean kit, which is very, very difficult to defend against if they're doing it right.
The need for a good strategy for your country alone goes out the window in both cases, as you've either already lost or are going to be integrated in to a european theater command, where systems commonality will be very helpful for logistics - unless its susceptible to (sigh) cyberwarfare.
That word is so fucking cringey.