You mean we wouldn't send some tin cans to pull up next to it and watch and if it hung around long enough some destroyers, missile frigrates and the like? Just curious really. I don't know diddly about this, I just don't figure we'd let a hostile park that close without some form of at least a "passive" response.
If someone is demonstrating hostile intent, we could send them to the bottom no matter where they were parked. However, if we didn't have reason to believe they were doing anything more than listening to whatever broadcast they could get then no, we couldn't do anything.
In the cold war "Russian Trawlers" would routinely sit off our ports to listen in and monitor traffic. When we were running on the surface, we used to waive at their crews doing laundry up on deck. Thew were more than 12 miles off the coast, and not demonstrating hostile intent, so the most we could do was waive.
Don't get me wrong, we did keep an eye on them and monitor them, we just couldn't shoot them without additional reason.
hoser