Why don't they place a fortress near the Entrance in Pacific Rim

Question

We see in the movie that Jaegers can clearly survive down there. Also we know that the reason the Jaegers are spread thin is the large area. What if we placed a fortress, or at least a guard, and follow this plan of action:

We know that there used to be a lot of Jaegers, so why not place 5 near the Rim, and have them in 8 hour shifts. They didn't know that there could be double occurrences then. Also place a Jaeger or two in every large city in the Pacific(Tokio, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, etc), just in case the Kaiju escaped.

Since we know that the Entrance releases a lot of energy (That's how they found Kaiju), there wouldn't be any surprises other than the double occurrences, but then they could just increase the guard until they found a solution.

Are you overlooking the fact that the Kaiju haven't actually proven much of a threat? Apart from the initial assaults, the Jaegers have been wildly successful, to the point that they're just going through the motions until the wall is built. — Valorum, Oct 29 '14 at 12:48
Yeah, but we see it declining towards the end. So the kills were bigger than the murders @Richard — MikhailTal, Oct 29 '14 at 13:25
I remember wondering about this, and then feeling like the novelization covered it, but I can't remember the exact reason - aside from the inherent difficulty of building a base in the middle of the ocean. — phantom42, Oct 29 '14 at 13:49
@phantom42 not a fortress then. Not even a camp. Just 5 Jaegers standing next to each other. — MikhailTal, Oct 29 '14 at 15:27

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 29 '14 at 15:36

We know from the film's narration that the Jaegar project was the most massive engineering project in the history of mankind. We also know that the Jaegers initially proved very successful against the single incursions, with only one lone scientist predicting that there would eventually be double incursions.

In addition, we know that The Wall was being constructed as a long-term solution, and was also a massive engineering project that spanned the globe. Presumably, the resources and effort needed to build & maintain a defensive "fortress" around the Rift were calculated to be higher than the existing Jaeger or Wall defense. Had additional resources been available, it's more likely that they would have been used to construct additional Jaegers to bolster the existing defense.

Besides the massive logistics involved in building an underwater facility of that size, you would also have to account for the defense of the project while under construction. Say you get the fortress 2/3 done, then a Kaiju pops out and gets one good swipe across it despite the efforts of any on-site Jaegers. Now all that effort - as well as billions of dollars & any invested resources - are gone and you're back to square one. Speaking from a loss/gain perspective, it's not a very efficient solution compared to others.

The Wall, on the other hand, was believed to be a much better solution. The world's leaders & experts had no way of knowing it would be that ineffective against the Kaiju, and everyone seemed to believe that it was a fail-safe answer to the problem.

This is something which baffled me... How could the leading thinkers of the world not foresee the fallibility of building a wall which the Kaiju could so easily destroy? — JBeagle, Oct 30 '14 at 14:34
@Beagle90 - as I understand it, the Wall would have stopped the previous Kaiju categories. At the time of its design & construction, the world had never seen the higher categories. But yea, I think the Wall was a stupid idea. — Omegacron, Oct 30 '14 at 15:15
One thing, what about a shift guard of 5 Jaegers rather than a fortress? — MikhailTal, Oct 30 '14 at 18:02
It sounds reasonable, but impossible to speculate without knowing more about the maintenance needs & environment-specific (i.e. - underwater) operation of Jaegers. — Omegacron, Oct 30 '14 at 18:24

Why don't they place a fortress near the Entrance in Pacific Rim

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