No defense for this type of attack from the water. All coastal cities and cities by rivers can be hit relatively reasy. Reminds me of Jeff Heads Dragon series where Cargo ships were used by the Chinese as support platforms from which to launch attacks.
In this case you infiltrate the city days or weeks ahead of time. No weapons just regular pass-ported sleepers. They make contacts with local support insurgents. That group would be impossible to find and they would not be told anything until the day of the attack. If you did find them they would be unarmed with only legal support assets with them. Food, cash and communication equipment. The heavily armed munitions rubber-craft are launched from a licensed commercial transport ship under cover of night. They contact the sleepers and local insurgents with attack plans. Sleepers and insurgents soften targets for the heavily armed commandos from the rubberized crafts. Heavy explosives can be carried in by activated sleepers from the rubberized crafts. These are Barbary Pirate tactics updated to the modern world. Extensively trained Pakistani terrorists, infused with Somali Pirate ransom money and Afghanistan drug profits.
Those commercial transport platforms can travel undetected to just about anywhere in the world. Mumbai was a prime target because it was a peninsula jutting out into the sea. Amazing how long this siege warfare has been going on now. We are into the third day. Still firing and explosions at the Taj.
NYC could be just as vulnurable as would many other cities unfortunately. I hope the intelligence agencies learn from this.
CNN is going to look at this next, just mentioned it as I was typing this.
...”a peninsula jutting out into the sea”....
hmmm, Miami comes to mind, and so do several other locations in the USA.