In 1966, while I was flying the F-105 over N. Vietnam, we lost one
every 65 missions. In 1991, during Desert Storm we lost one fixed wing
aircraft every 3500 mission. In 2003 in Iraqi Freedom we lost one
fixed wing aircraft in 16,500 mission.

One of the many "wrong" lessons learned in Vietnam,the ideas of Boyd&Co and
Stealth proponents are only two of them.

Vietnam was a proxy war,NV had full support of the other superpower and
China,whereas IRaq was a completely isolated third world country.Moreover,2003
Iraq Freedom operation started after 10 years of intense "preperations" and
further weakening Iraqi defences ,even if US used B-17s during Iraqi Freedom
(DSII),we probably would not lose even one of them either.

Only one conflict in last half century is comparable to Vietnam and its Yom
Kippur war .
FYI during first two weeks of Yom Kippur War Arab armies launched well over
7000 SAMs aganist Israeli aircraft.
Do you know how many SAMs launched aganist US aircraft during DSI and DSII?

Even aganist a small and weak country with improvisation skills,like Serbia,the
performance of Air Force was moderate at the best as a quote from Gen.Jumper
explains "Missions over Serbia on day 78 were as dangerous as they were one day
1"

Your next opponent might be Taliban,Iraq,Zimbabve,Ruanda,Backwardistan etc but
there is no guarantee for that.