Having now read all the posts from over the weekend, I see this message board has now ended its usefulness.
Wooley whatever - learn the distinction between the sim and real life. You can't set up a GCI web in the sim - its a tree. Tree means one and only one parent - take out the parent and that branch is dead. The only way to make it resemble a web is to build redundant branches. The only purpose to using SOC and CRC plugins as parents is the fact that they don't emit - per Elf's messages there is no functionality given to the plugins themselves.
Part of the purpose of asking questions about distance and density is to pin down exactly how the sim is working - it is a moronic truth that the more SAMs I place the "harder" the mission is. What is important to many is determining what the optimal range/density relationship is, AS MODELLED in the sim, to help build realistic air defense systems that are a challenge to fly against.
Regardless of what you have read in comic books about Europe or whatever, economy of force is a very realistic determinant when allocating resources. In case those words are too big for you - there won't be a sh*tload of SAMs and EWRs laying around the map in redundant sectors. High value targets and likely ingress routes will be saturated, other areas will be bare, and remaining assets will be in Corps/Echelon Above Corps reserve to replace combat losses.
What Baron Max and myself (and others) have been trying to pin down is what is modelled in the sim - specifically the benefits of GCI linking (range/accuracy/engagement benefits) and the break-even point for those resources. Your blatant inability to answer simple questions about those items indicates a complete failure to either understand your own "model" of GCI structure, or perhaps to understand that this is a game programmed by humans. As such, the comic book version of European air defense is rather inconsequential, as the only answers that matter relate to what IS MODELLED IN THE SIM.
To JayP, Elf, BaldEagle, thanks for the great website and the great answers. The learning curve for both the game and the mission builder was greatly flattened by the information I've found here. Sorry this place took a nose dive so fast.