Did NERV/SEELE WANT Jet Alone to reach the city and meltdown?

[AdamMalkovitch]

It seems I notice something new every single time I rewatch EVA

Jet Alone/A Human Work isn't a great episode, but I'm glad I didn't skip it this time, because after countless watches of the series I finally get what's ACTUALLY happening in this episode, instead of what's just shown to us. An unknown party, likely Kaji, remotely hacks and deletes all of Jet Alone's contingency programming just before its activation test in Old Tokyo, in order to sabotage the demonstration of the machine in front of a bunch of people. When Misato goes in herself to deactivate JA manually, she finds that the password, HOPE, no longer works, and tries to force the control pillars back into place by hand. She barely gets the first one moving, when the control program is restored, and JA shuts down- again, likely Kaji, either of his own volition or as an order from NERV so they wouldn't have to replace Misato with a new ops director.

What struck me this time, upon realizing this sabotage WAS done by NERV/SEELE, was Ritsuko's debrief of the situation to Gendo Ikari at the end of the episode. "Other than Katsuragi's actions, all went according to plan."

It's obvious enough that JA was sabotaged during the demonstration specifically to impress upon people that 'only NERV and the EVAs can be trusted to deal with the Angel threat', but seeing as how Misato WASN'T supposed to stop JA, and that it was aimed TOWARDS a city, it seems very likely that part of the plan was to ENSURE that not just government officials, but the public as well, were to bare witness to the incompetence of the JSSDF, by sacrificing an entire city in a nuclear manner Japan is all too familiar with.


Regardless of all that, this event and the "borrowing" of their positron rifle in ep6 to deal with Ramiel means there were likely a TON of people in the JSSDF who were personally effected by NERV's shenanigans, and this actually explains the brutality behind the raid on NERV HQ in End of Evangelion. It was just supposed to be an operation to capture the EVAs, but with full authorization to use any means necessary, the pissed off and embarrassed JSSDF troops took full advantage to kill everyone they came across, revenge for making shit so difficult for them.
... that or I'm reading too far into it and part of the orders were to kill any and all NERV personnel to keep classified knowledge from leaking out, like G.U.N. raiding Space Colony ARK.

[BernardoCairo]

I think what Ritsuko meant by "aside from Katsuragi's actions, everything went according to plan" was that the Jet Alone Unit was going to freak out and stop regardless of what she did. It stopped on its own and there is no clue anyone hacked it other than Nerv itself. Misato was of great value, as was Unit 01. They wouldn't let them horse around a time bomb if they knew it was going to explode. If they really wanted the bomb to go off, they wouldn't even let Misato get involved as it would have consequences for their reputation (imagine if she "failed"). Gendo wanted to send a message and did just that. Misato and Shinji only made Nerv look good in comparison.
It's a great episode with tons of world building...