People tend to forget that the US lost 10,000 aircraft in Vietnam [including] 1,000 then state-of-the-art fighter and attack aircraft. Remember this was against a 3rd World country with a very small and unsophisticated air force against a "super power."
My recall of the BIG "lesson learned" from allied aircraft losses in VN was that 90% of aircraft losses were due to ground-launched air defenses…the lion's share being good ol' AAA. I think it had more to do with required "dumb bomb"-delivery techniques (and release altitudes) coupled with poor/repetitive mission planning and target area tactics (e.g., aircraft making multiple runs on the same target, multiple strikers using same roll-in/pull-off headings, templated/predictable ingress/egress routes, yadda yadda yadda) than A-A missile technology, although there was some of that…and arguably more significantly, poor understanding of the actual capabilities of the missiles we had at the time. Read: a lot of shooting outside of actual required launch parameters. Hence, for the Navy's part, the Ault Report and all that resulted from that. A quick "Google-source" indicates that about
260 "fixed-wing" US aircraft of all types…including RECCE drones, transports, B-52s, etc…were actually lost to enemy aircraft. There may be other/better data, but that seems in the ballpark. Given that the U.S. Air Force ALONE flew 5.25
million sorties over South Vietnam, North Vietnam, northern and southern Laos, and Cambodia (more Google-fu, and we're getting into possibly meaningless "fruit salad" comparisons/data), the number of air-to-air losses starts to lose its shock value.
Concur with everything Catmando said about hubris and overconfidence. Just an opinion from the aging Peanut Gallery…but that's what needs to be avoided when next our folks meet any sort of capable IADS…including modern (if not 5th Gen/state-of-the-art) opposing aircraft/A-A weapons and decently trained/experienced enemy pilots.
That said, my perception is that the folks in today's cockpits still have a better overall mix of training, equipment, tactics and appreciation of their own capes/lims than does any foreseeable foe. Maybe I'm the one that's guilty of hubris/overconfidence…and I do appreciate that "quantity has a quality all its own", should a potential enemy's numerical superiority become a significant factor.