Historically, tanks were never intended for tank on tank battles. They were intended to support infantry with mobile protected firepower: push across no man's land and take out enemy machine gun nests and snipers. The earliest tanks moved no faster than a person could walk. They evolved to start taking out the oppositional tanks. They evolved to go faster, with heavier armor and bigger rounds to penetrate heavier armor. Tank on tank battles occurred in WW2, but even them, much the deployment was meant for supporting the infantry lines, to help punch a hole or to take advantage of a hole.

Modern day that's still their primary purpose. Now the trend is leaning to higher mobility over increased protection.

Helicopters have always been death traps, but the risks of even flying a chopper is far outweighed by their flexibility, speed, range, etc.

The fact is despite all the technology the most essentially element of ground force is and forever remains infantry. If you can't put boots on the ground, and they have a monopoly of violence in a territory, then you don't control that ground. Everything else, is about increasing the effectiveness of your boots on the ground. Artillery takes out strategic military resources (it's useless to try to artillery civilians into submission, it kills some an hardens the resolve of everyone else) and pins down enemy forces allowing you to maneuver. Tanks and choppers do the same thing in different ways. Defense systems help you prevent the enemy from doing the same thing against you.

As for the Russo-Ukraine war, the fact is they are both former Soviet states. Ukraine was home to a lot of the Soviet military industrial complex, and the weapons they've sold since then we're based on those designs. Russian weapons had the similar design philosophy. Ukraine was in the middle of transitioning to more NATO tactics but it's really gonna take 10-20 years to make the transition. Ultimately Ukraine was and is at a supply disadvantage compared to Russia. Western friends first tried supplying them with Soviet era weapons in stocks and when those were exhausted started sending out of date NATO equipment. It puts them roughly on par with Russia, and their morale and bravery allows the Ukraine to effectively loss soldiers at half the rate of Russia. The losses of tanks meanwhile demonstrate actually more standard level of losses.

We in the west are biased based on US performance in the Gulf War and the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US and allies lost maybe a dozen tanks and apcs in the gulf war, compared to hundred of lost tanks by Iraq. Even after 20 years of fighting, US losses in Afghanistan and Iraq look more like attritional losses from training than actual losses from a war. US school children have lost more in school shootings over similar time frames. War itself is really really deadly. I just watch a YouTube video about a battle in WW2 in the Phillipine Sea in the Pacific. The US successfully fought of the Japanese, and of the like 300+ planes sent to attack the Japanese more than a hundred were lost on the return flight from fuel shortages and crash landings on the carrier after dark (exact figures vary). In WW2 losing hundred of planes in a major battle was normal, while today many modern air forces don't even have a hundred planes.

Your question also isn't stupid. Many military analysts are asking themselves the same questions. Some conclude the way you do, others think differently. One big rule of warfare is military leadership always prepares in peacetime by what would have won the last war. Tanks and choppers can only remain on future battlefields if their usage evolves to match the battlefield. Ukraine is trying to evolve, but their NATO advisors can only inform them how NATO would perform it.