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Originally Posted by Blademaster
Why was the shipyard closed?
By the way, adding armour after landing wouldn't make sense from a combative point of view. You wouldn't be able to mount armour when it's raining fire and steel on you.
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The shipyard, base and NAS were closed because the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach wanted all that acreage for container terminal parking lots. They weren't making a dime off of that 240 plus acres while it was the most cost efficient shipyard in the country. To hell with our defense structure, let's dump the Navy and get our 15% rake off the top from Port rentals so we can build more coffee shops on Pine Avenue.
As for adding armor AFTER landing would be for continueing the assault inland across unsecured terrain. The addition of the armor BEFORE disembarking may make the AAV too heavy to float. Not good. That's why, on my own, I was working up a design for temporary pontoons to be snap-hooked to the sides to allow fully loaded AAV's (including those with bolted on spaced armor) enough buoyancy to get to the beach.
As I said in my original post, some were already so overloaded with communications equipment, etc. that they had "Don't Go Near the Water" signs on them.