ArtKramr wrote:

Subject: Night bombers interception....
From: Guy Alcala

Besides, active defense tends to be psychologically more
satisfying than passive defense, even if the latter is more effective,

My experience was just the opposite.

My "even if" should be read "when", but at night passive defense was
usually more effective, while by day flying in massed formations, active
defense was more effective. Active vs. passive defense effectiveness tends
to be situationally dependent. The psychologically satisfying bit re
active defense seems to be universal, though. Hard kills are more
satisfying than soft kills, because the physical evidence (target blowing
up etc.) is not only more exciting, but also you can usually tell that it
was an action on your part that caused it. It's a lot tougher to determine
the cause of soft kill, leaving the situation kind of vague and
unsatisfying.

For example, take the case of a ship protecting itself from a missile. If
it manages to shoot it down by its own missiles or guns, that tends to be
fairly obvious and relatively easy to assign credit for, although if more
than one system is firing on the missile multiple claims are likely to be
made. But if the missile isn't shot down but just misses, was it decoyed,
jammed, did it have a malfunction, was it fired at too great a range, was
the target not in the acquisition envelope, was the target signature too
low to be detected, etc. There's often no way to tell, and no satisfying
explosion to see/hear, even though the ultimate effect is the same - the
target ship is safe.

Guy