AWACS coverage probably wouldn't be good enough to detect Alicorn subs or their successors. It's probably a good idea and something we're already doing to be able to run comms and sensors in atmosphere. My impression, and it could be wrong, would to add on or sub in another phase of SADN to add in massive surveillance drone factories to identify and alert any surfacing sub that they find to maximize chances of stopping the attack or killing it, since we have way more strategic targets than they have subs that can hit them.
Side note: Anyone else think that Nod actually fucked up by doing the global nuke strikes? I mean, imagine if they had waited until Kane ordered strikes to kick off a TW4 and we didn't know of the tactics of nuke deployment Nod now has access to, or the issues our SADN systems have vs those tactics. About the only thing we can't really take steps to prevent is the briefcase nuke.
I think, that Kane allowing us to kill off a hardline minor warlord with no organized response, who stood in the way of closing our only outstanding strategic vulnerability, and then showing off the Alicorn, was a move intended to promote long term peace and stability.
Let me game this out. At no point have we received evidence Kane has intervened in the lead up to Karachi, meaning he's probably fine with any outcome here that doesn't lead to a broader conflict. If we had managed to negotiate passage with the Shah to relieve BZ18, Baldy probably benefits from learning more about the viability of Nod and GDI operating near each other long term. I don't think that was possible, because Isfahani would have had to surrender sovereignty to the great enemy and marginalize himself. So what consequences come from the Karachi campaign so far?
Our extensive defenses stopped cold almost every strike launched, but some well executed operations or ones using extremely new SSNs could penetrate and strike strategic targets in disparate parts of the world, and we couldn't kill the one we found. The ground and naval operations have been a brutal slog that kind of turned my stomach but have resulted in preliminary success, ending the strategic isolation of the Himalayas. It's not a result of Karachi operations, but GDI military is in the process of overhauling itself to make use of new technologies that will require significant investment on many levels. The shortage of labor/people we're experiencing makes every life lost hit harder and reminds us endeavors like this are not clean.
The reveal of the Alicorn, and supposedly the untraceable past visual range strike aircraft we caught and butchered, makes clear that military pursuits will be extremely costly, even if the other side can't win on the battlefield and they know it. Keeping it secret would have been more useful in a master stroke type plan, hammering a variety of vulnerabilities across the board without warning, but revealing and hurting GDI in this way makes belligerence much harder to conscience on our end.
I think this passage of play has made we the Treasury very uncomfortable with poking Nod in the future when our planet is being eaten out from under us.
