Griz described it perfectly.
The only way to defend against a NOE raid is to have people either sitting in the tower available or players willing to just auger and go help break it up. I personally will pretty much never auger to defend vs. a mission. (I might ditch though) I also don't think many players will just nose it into the ground to up and defend vs. the NOE mission. Not many players are willing to just sit in the tower and wait for a NOE mission to smash. (I know I would get bored after 5min)
The NOE mission people COUNT on the above because, as it has been proven over and over and over and over, if the base gets defended, they probably won't capture it. That is why to also go out of their way to pick fields that are away from the action and have a higher probability of getting snuck.
What game are YOU playing?
What is even more pathetic is when they send 2-3 bomber fomations ahead of time and kill the hangers right before the NOE mission arrives. It is bad enough they are in a hoard attacking a field with little to no defenders, but they kill all the hangers because they are afraid it WILL get defended and they know if that happens, they are going to probably fail.
Missions like that tell me one of two things.
1) the mission planner is afraid of how good the enemy is so they go to great lengths to remove them from the picture.
2) the mission planner is afraid of how bad the friendlies are in the mission so they go to great lengths to remove any bad guys from the picture.
It's not "tactics" it's "fear".
Frankly I think you are oversimplifying. As I've said before NOE missions are busted all the time and easily. There is about a 5 minute length of time before an NOE can reach target. During that time all it takes is one person on country to send out the warning.
At any one time there is about 25% of the force in tower I've noticed. All it takes is one of them to jump out and grab some alt, then the NOE is going to be helpless.
As far as sending bombers first to knock out the hangers, sound fair to me, though I've rarely seen it in conjunction with an NOE. First off it will take about four sets of bombers to get all 6 hangers on the first pass. If the bombers go NOE, they will have to pop before reaching the base to get alt, otherwise their own bombs will blow them up. Likely as not the ack will kill them before the second hanger, because they will be so low.
The sooner they pop, the longer the time you give to the enemy. Doesn't make sense to do it that way, NOE are won or lost on surprise, not killing the hangers. I guess the last thing is to add four pilots as bombers takes away from the town killer numbers. Usually I can barely muster enough to kill the town, much less send half them on a hanger banger errand.
As far as 'fear' is concerned, lets keep in mind it is just a game, who is really 'fearful' of anything about it.
Anyway I'm not entirely sure what your point is. Are you saying the NOE missions should not be allowed, or that perhaps dar should register no matter what the altitude?
Or perhaps bases shouldn't be capturable?