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Originally Posted by Chock
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U.S. Navy is not in "harms way" to begin with.
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I imagine that's exactly what a terrorist would like the US Navy to think, and I daresay the sailors on the USS Cole thought that five minutes before they were attacked.
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No (modern) precident exists for terrorist attacks in domestic ports on naval assets in Western states AFAIK.
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Well that's true, but it didn't stop the IRA blowing up Lord Louis Mountbatten's boat slap bang in the middle of when the UK was on high alert to specific threats from that organisation, killing him and Baroness Brabourne among others, and on the same day also killing eighteen soldiers from the Parachute Regiment at Warrenpoint. This, in the same year that the INLA also blew up MP Airey Neave's car on the ramp coming out of Parliament, killing him too. All these being just a small selection of the bombings which took place that year in the UK, despite security measures and awareness of threats.
When the US Air Force can forget about some nuclear weapons slung under an aircraft and leave it sitting unguarded on the apron at a base for hours before anyone thought something was amiss, it's not a stretch to imagine that the security at Naval bases might have a few gaps in it. Complacency concerning enemies and potential enemies is just asking for it.
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That is fair, but what is the equivelant to the IRA in the United States? The situation is not that volatile in the U.S. that you can draw a comparison. We had a couple of guys fly planes into buildings and a handful of botched plots, nothing else. A simple risk assessment makes me believe that relocated the fleets or keeping more ships at sea is not worth the cost; there is low probability of a successful terror attack (in the 15 or so years that OBL and al Qaeda have been active, they have committed only one successful terror attack on U.S. soil) and low impact (we could lose a destroyer a la
Cole to conventional explosives, and a nuclear, chemical, or biological device might ruin a lot of people's day, but aren't all sailors and soldiers trained to survive NBC attacks? And what are the odds of those occuring?). I just can't see it being worth shifting personnel and infrastructure and dredging a new port in the middle of nowhere.