Sailors getting underway from the East Coast can no longer expect the Atlantic Ocean to double as a safe haven, the three-star helming the Navy\u2019s 2nd Fleet warned Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a rise in the number of increasingly deadly Russian submarines, sailors \u201ccan expect to be operating in a contested space once they leave Norfolk,\u201d Vice Adm. Andrew \u201cWoody\u201d Lewis<\/a> said during Tuesday\u2019s maritime security event<\/a> at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOver the last 20 years, most of the time we got underway from Norfolk in order to operate somewhere else, not in the Atlantic,\u201d Lewis said before indicating that had changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have to look hard to see that the world is only getting more complicated,\u201d he continued before declaring the Atlantic Ocean “a battle space that can\u2019t be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His warning came in the wake of reports that a Russian spy ship <\/a>had been lurking off the East Coast and operating in an unsafe manner in recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n