Strategic Homeport

Strategic Homeport was a plan developed by the then Secretary of the Navy John Lehman for building new naval bases for the U.S. Navy. It was proposed as part of the 600-ship Navy plan of the Reagan Administration. It called for the construction of new ports for existing and newly-commissioned ships.

The plan was based on five strategic principles - forcedispersal to complicate Soviet targeting, battlegroup integrity,wider industrial base utilization, logistics suitability andgeographic considerations such as reduced transit times to likelyoperating areas.

[http://www.ndu.edu/library/n3/92-E-058.pdf]

According to two sources, the program was devised in part to achieve a political goal - to build support for the naval expansion program though the promise of new naval bases [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/port-intro.htm] [http://www.ndu.edu/library/n3/92-E-058.pdf] . Indeed, it enjoyed broad support both on Congress and in the Reagan Administration.