Reply #158: reason for bombers

[jollyreaper2112]

My guess: the ruskies can detect missile launches from orbit, same as us. We both can also detect surface nuclear blasts via those same sats. It would be less worrisome for the russians to see the blast over the iranian targets than to see missiles rising from our ICBM fields with no guarantee of what their targets will be. Presumably Putin would be informed of the strikes a reasonable amount of time before the flashes would be detected, maybe a half hour or so. Soon enough they shouldn't panic, not soon enough to give the iranians much of a chance to react. But we all know how well tight planning on this sort of thing goes, remember the Japanese informing us we were at war hours after Pearl was attacked? It was supposed to be before the attack. Whoops. And given this being the Bush administration, I bet they wouldn't even think of warning anyone before the attack.