The procedures for what to do in case of a missile strike were hammered out over a period of decades by numerous adminstrations. Nearly every nuclear-war scenario had been wargamed over and over such that all presidential decisions came down to mutiple choice questions (option A, B, or C) that they had been extensively briefed on beforehand. I daresay that that level of readiness does still exist for that threat.
It is facile to draw a comparison to a different threat, which had not been foreseen by any adminstration and was not planned for.
That would be because each and every threat is so different from all other threats that there can be no common planning for any of them? Maybe something along the lines of “get the commander in chief to a secure location where he has access to as much command and control functionality as we can give him”? Does that vary significantly from threat to threat?
As you no doubt know, NORAD ran drills on how to respond to threats from evildoers using jets for weapons. Did someone in the president’s party check to see if there was a playbook for this particular threat, or were they overwhelmed by the unthinkability of the whole scenario?
Not at all. I’d just like to see a little more snap from the men at the top, particularly when, as Furt kindly pointed out, they face a threat of unknown dimensions.
Fair enough. So long as we remember that the unknown dimensions may take a few minutes to work out. Even to the point that they know enough to hustle the President off to a safe location.