>Indeed. It's been pointed out before that one of the major flaws with
>Clarke and Cartwright's strategy in 'Day of Infamy' was that there was
>nothing to keep the WDF fleet from simply folding directly out from
>inside the sphere.

Its probobly part of the operational orders that they're supposed to sortie first, just out of sheer inertia, and just in case anyone pops a drive or something that the sphere is between the ship and most of the residents.

And dont I recall the ATT being able to punch THROUGH the handwavium the sphere is made of once or twice, as part of the spanning drama of just how hard fought the second, or whatever it was, battle for ZC was...