Question NORAD in Whateley Universe

Standard deployment prevents the use of active duty military units on domestic soil. This is the primary reason that the National Guard is the force on the scene for unrest or disaster response. But things are quite a bit different in the WU... not only are their paranormal dangers to be prepared to respond to.. there's also the potential threat of extraterrestrial invasion (again). There are also orbital platforms, both private and government projects, and so on.

As a result, the National Guard (which is still the WU's primary domestic response force) is better equipped and has a more active role in the defense of the country... and a much higher ratio of the defense budget. DARPA and other similar organizations work with the guard to be prepared to respond to A level paranormal threats effectively. There are also significant differences across the board on standing orders, base budgets and defenses, and home defense stations. The intricacies of all this would be complex and the result of decades of the awareness of paranormal threats rising up from domestic locations. But... as they are not intricacies that are a part of telling stories of high school kids at a private school... they are also intricacies that we haven't fleshed out in much detail.

Oh, a number of the authors are ex-military and we probably COULD hash it out if we needed to, but for the most part that isn't the case. You're mostly seeing the military through the eyes of ex-military either as campus security or the occasional late mutation paranormal.

What does that mean specifically for air defense?

Well... it means there are a lot more Air Force observation and training flights on the roster than here. Enough to be considered a CAP? No... no... that would be overstepping the bounds of defense of the domestic region. But if you also look at the National Guard's air coverage and integrate those with our DARPA and terrorism response dropship locations? It might all add up to something like a tightly woven net that allows air response pretty quickly.

Or maybe not.

Oh noes, all these fighters and drop ships are coming in to a mostly uninhabited land owned by a native american tribe in the mountains of new hampshire. should we scramble?

Remember, just because YOU know there's a school for mutants there... it doesn't mean the people necessary to put planes in the air do. What most likely happened during the Halloween attack is that ATC reported an extraordinary amount of high altitude and suborbital craft coming in over that region and started diverting other traffic to ensure that if it were something unusual, that regular flights wouldn't be involved. The low level analysts looked at it and said, this is definitely Syndicate or another organized group ... but there's not a significant target in that region. Recommendations would go out to military and intelligence groups to consider this a possible staging event... and orders would come down to put defenses in action to protect nearby critical locations.

What would that mean? About 15-20 minutes into the point of visible activity, without direct reports, there were planes taking off near Boston to fly CAP on Boston itself. Paranormal teams in the northeastern region would have gotten an alert. And so forth. Eventually, a recon flight would be in the air to overfly the area and try to identify what had happened.

Planes in the air 30 minutes into the activity with no DIRECT report is pretty good... far better than what it would be in our universe, for certain. When I wrote Fling's messed up flight into downtown Tampa, I had aircraft inbound in response to her flight BEFORE she even got into downtown Tampa... they didn't get there in time to engage, but that level of response basically meant there were planes on the runway with pilots in the cockpits ready to go. That wouldn't be normal even in the WU. And if it ever came up, I was just going to say it was a training flight with a light weapons load for on the water target runs. Just bad luck that they happened to be ready to go.


Also, keep in mind that very little happens in the WU at the pace that it does in a Marvel story... or especially a DC one. Someone on Superman's level flies in from Europe and hits a bank... then flies out. If Superman himself doesn't drop in to stop him, you're talking about someone who robbed a bank faster than most of us can dial 911 and get out the words "this bank is being robbed". In the Whateley Universe, most robberies or any sort of attack... still going to operate near to real time for our universe. Meaning, you have time to act before you have to worry about anything but random lucky patrols. Even if an alarm goes off immediately on entry... there is still a minimum travel time before response can arrive. And BANKS, unlike some targets, have designed alarm systems to alert people as soon as possible. Whateley's alert system is limited ... they can't just tell everyone they are under attack. Otherwise everyone they told is now in on the secret of their existence. Even if they did... not knowing of their existence before receiving the alarm will make it very difficult to respond to it quickly. Fast reaction forces burn out very quickly waiting for something o happen.

amratner wrote: Sir, either you have not read what I wrote, or you have serious trouble with reading comprehension.
I do not think anything is equivalent about the 2 incidents.
Either the US has a robust air defense system, or it does not. Which is it?

Going to give you one last 'answer' and then, if you continue to push, I'm going to close the thread. I DID already answer this, above.

1. We are not writing military thrillers that require us to know the full details of what bases have certain types of planes, pilots and standing orders that enable them to keep a ready launch craft on the runway. So we don't have all the details to answer the question in any significant level of detail. NOR am I, at 1:00 in the morning without discussing it with other authors going to arbitrarily make up an answer just to satisfy your inability to accept an ambiguous answer.

2. As I said, the military situation in the WU is more complex than our own because they have the potential of paranormal and extraterrestrial threats. That means that yes, the National Guard has a higher budget and does have the capability for domestic defensive actions, including air defense, that our universe guard does not. And, in addition, there are more liason points between the guard and active military branches for crisis support where the guard does not have the ability to handle things alone. Is that enough to keep an active CAP? No. Is it enough to keep a ready-5 on the runway of every base? No. But it IS more capable than our own. Exactly how much? See number 1. Don't know. It simply hasn't been an issue relevant to us writing stories about high school kids at a private school for mutants.

3. This isn't an either or question. It's a RELATIVE one. I honestly have no idea what 'exactly' you mean by

Either the US has a robust air defense system, or it does not. Which is it?

That's a bullshit question. They have craft capable of going out of the atmosphere into LEO. The distribution of plane classes is more varied. There's a much greater use of low carry weight interceptors. Unlike in the DC/Marvel universes... a plane still FAR out-speeds a paranormal flier (in most cases). Compared to what we have... hell yes, its robust. But no, they're not putting entire WINGS into the air in minutes.

a robust air defense system that can put more than a wing of armed fighters in the air in a matter of minutes

I don't know how much experience YOU have with military aircraft, but from MY experience on a carrier, that's laughable. Can you scramble an entire wing in minutes? Yes. When everyone knows its going to happen. You can't even get a PAIR of planes in the air in a minutes unless the pilots were sitting in the cockpits in ready status.

We appreciate your attention to detail... but in all honesty... we don't care. It's not that important of an element to the stories.

Erisian wrote: As per Presidential Order #666, the United States Air Force is required to maintain combat readiness to react within minutes to neutralize the greatest threat to world peace ever known...

... Jericho's wardrobe.

Lethal Force is pre-authorized in the case that any outfit might be at risk of being transmitted Live on national (or worse, international) television. DARPA developed special tools and software that was distributed to Internet core routers to block any live-streaming events. For the good of mankind, these were shared with the Russians, the Chinese, and oddly enough, Sri Lanka.

This is likely the most accurate depiction of military readiness ever presented for Whateley Academy.

Folks this is something me and Mage argue incessantly about (because we can be bored nerds too) and the blunt point is:

For most of the stories, the US military (and most others) does not have a large part to play in our stories.

The F-15s shot down while armed in IPP4 don't have to be a CAP. They could have been on their way to a firing range area to engage drone targets.

The National Guard (and other branches of the military) has GOTH plans (GO To Hell plans) in the event of a city under siege by Diabolik, Deicide, Reaper, or half a dozen other threats. Mostly when the threat is that bad, the mission of the Marine/Army/NatGuard rifleman is to die in the place of the civilians. They go in to save the people who did not sign along the dotted line, swear an oath, and receive orders to counterstrike the demons coming to slay them.

But the details of military readiness and response are by and large unnecessary to the story (Unless one of us thinks it would be funny, or insightful) so the Tactical/Strategic readiness nerds of the world don't have a big part in the stories we tell.

I know there's military nerds out there who read our stories, former military, doesn't matter.

Except in very specific cases, unless we have a reason or a need to codify a national-level response to a mutant/syndicate/A-List/Alien invasion threat?

We're not going to do it. It's not a part of the story. It's unnecessary information. Use your imagination, what you know of the military and fill in the blanks within the context of the stories.