Russia and China have the ability to attack U.S. Navy equipment when it's docked in American ports, a top admiral warned while discussing Washington's intensifying rivalries with Moscow and Beijing.

“The homeland is not a sanctuary,” Vice Adm. Andrew "Woody" Lewis said on Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Lewis, who leads Joint Forces Command Norfolk and the Navy's newly reactivated 2nd Fleet, has been tasked with protecting the Atlantic from “great power” rivals such as Russia and China. The fleet, a mainstay of American defenses during the Cold War, was mothballed in 2011 and then re-established in 2018 as the United States's relationship with Russia deteriorated.

“Our new reality is that when our sailors toss lines over and set sail, they can expect to be operating in a contested space once they leave Norfolk,” he said. “We are seeing an ever-increasing number of Russian submarines deploy in the Atlantic. And these submarines are more capable than ever, deploying for longer periods of time with more lethal weapons systems.”

New technologies provide unexpected ways to threaten the Navy, such as “quadcopters” and other “small unmanned aerial systems” (that is, drones) that “can present a potential threat to forces” even before a ship is underway.

American strategists and tacticians need to get creative in planning how to stymie such threats because the Navy doesn’t have the kind of overwhelming military edge that U.S. forces enjoyed in recent decades, he said. “I believe that there's an awakening amongst our sailors that there are real bad things, potentially. ... Where we take a lot of risk nowadays is in our cybersloppiness, for lack of a better term.”

“If we were to look at how great power competition will be driven, it will be driven by investments in gray matter as much as gray hulls,” Lewis added. “The gap that we'll have on a technological basis, weapons systems, will not be that great. It's how we fight.”

The admiral’s comments amplified Pentagon warnings that Russia and China are developing plans to block U.S. forces from key ports around the globe and to threaten American troops long before they arrive on the scene of a crisis.

“Our ships can no longer expect to operate in a safe haven off the east coast or merely cross the Atlantic unhindered to operate in another location,” Lewis said.