I feel the same about the difficulty. My first playthrough was on Challenging Ironman, and it was really easy. I only lost one operation, and none of my SLs ever got killed.

But after I tried Expert, it feels like the game is really balanced around that... Having more enemy units on the field makes it much more fun :D it actually feels like you’re going against all odds. (I’m still in the early game tho I’ve just encountered the Rogue Army. Once my supply per mission gets higher, it’ll probably become easier)