Probably has a greater chance of success, too. All jokes aside, when the US talks about taking out S-300's and S-400, they're almost exclusively talking about export SAM's like the ones China, Iran and Venezuela operate, that may not be protected by medium and short range air defenses like Russian SAM's always are, not to mention how retardedly Syria was using the Pantsir-S in earlier years which lead to losing 2 or 3 of them to the Israeli Harop and the traitorous Armenian President deliberately leaving S-300 components exposed on the frontlines for Azerbaijan to destroy with Turkish drones. Incompetence and Sabotage will play a greater role in any S-300/400 systems being destroyed in future conflicts.
Largely agree, but to be fair Syria does not have enough air defence units to cover absolutely everything and they have clearly decided to split the air defence batteries down to single or twin TELs defending each site.
Recent lack of success from Israel seems to suggest they are moving them around so when they attack a site they really don't know what is there protecting it and it seems they are trying to attack sites not well protected but when they attack there is more air defence there than they were expecting.
Regarding incompetence... that was partly what led to the F-117 shootdown and the Iranian capture of that stealth drone, but it was also all about the defenders not sitting with their thumbs up their own asses thinking they can do nothing against the worlds last super power. It was Serb and Iranian work that led to those outcomes and neither result would have been possible without that work.
Look at the two different methods... B-2 and B-21 seem to be bombers that even with standoff weapons like glide bombs have to get too close to their targets to expect to survive, while the Bear and Blackjack are not even capable of carrying bombs these days AFAIK... they will be using standoff long range cruise missiles and probably hypersonic missiles where the missiles penetrate the air defences and hit the targets... and the air defence over the US is nothing like the air defence over Russia...
Any air defense network can be degraded and defeated given enough time.
Of course, but the bigger it is and the more integrated it is the harder it will be and the longer it will take... the Russian IADS doesn't have to operate for decades stopping HATO attack after attack after attack... when they attack the first time Russia can respond and that response will likely involve seriously damaging HATOs ability to keep attacking...
HATO is at the enormous disadvantage of having its defence and its attack capacity largely being centred around its air power.
It has a lot of aircraft but as we see in Afghanistan... take away the air power and the ground forces are horribly vulnerable to enemy air power because they are used to their own air power dealing with enemy air power and softening enemy ground forces.
To mount an attack HATO would have to strip resources from their defense and in the attack against Russia they are going to take serious losses which means even if they go on the defensive their defense is not going to be the same as it was...
The key is not Russia's air defense network, it is her counterstrike capability.
More accurately it is both because without one or the other they are in trouble... with a good IADS they will eventually get worn down, but with only a counterstrike capability they are vulnerable to the fact that the initial attack from HATO might limit the ability to counterstrike.
The best description of HATO is that it has a combined defence/attack capacity but it is all air based... and therefore rather fragile.