Not so certain about that last point about troops being put in harm's way. The war in Ukraine has shown just how effective drone strikes are, and nothing has been able to consistently shoot down our fighter and reconnaissance aircraft. The F-15 is 108-0. Not sure what the stats on the 22 and 35 are, but those probably go down due to pilot error more often than anything else.

My point is that I'm pretty certain that we would have been fielding these tactics before Russia popped off and invaded Ukraine, and may have been successful enough to dissuade Putin, though that seems extremely unlikely.

There is a reason a Russian/Soviet warship showed up during Operation Praying Mantis, to "take pictures for history." They were also seeing just how good our shit was, since no one had seen us in battle for long enough at that point that we had totally upgraded to a new generation of equipment.