In the past, every section of Virginia has been a battleground of some sort or another. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans competed for resources. Pre-colonial Virginians used stone and bone tools to construct wooden walls (pallisades) around towns, to protect against attack. The first English colonists at Jamestown did the same thing.
During Bacon's Rebellion, rebels burned Jamestown. The colonial governor fled across the Chesapeake Bay to Northampton County. The rebels followed in their own ships - only to be defeated there.
In the Revolutionary War, the Chesapeake Bay was an avenue of attack. The Virginians moved their capital inland from Williamsburg to Richmond, but the British easily sailed up the James River and destroyed public buildings in the new capital. While most marching and fighting occurred east of the Fall Line, the British cavalry did chase the General Assembly all the way to Charlottesville, forcing legislators to flee across the Blue Ridge to reassemble in Staunton.
In the War of 1812, British warships sailed up the Potomac River all the way to Alexandria, capturing merchants ships and enriching the British officers.
During the Civil War, all of Virginia was threatened at one time or another. Union forces retained control of Fort Wool and Fort Monroe, and quickly established control over Alexandria and Norfolk. Union forces in western counties guarded the B&O railroad (with some notable exceptions), and enabled the creation of the new state of West Virginia. Troops moved by railroad quickly from one place to another, starting with the transport of a Confederate army from the Shenandoah Valley to Manassas in July 1861. Even the artillery moved across the state; the Long Tom cannon used at Manassas was used later at Cumberland Gap.
The modern military bases in the state are located along the Fall Line or in Tidewater. If Congress authorized one more military base in the Norfolk area, it might cause Virginia to tilt up on its side and sink into the Atlantic Ocean...
While that is not literally true, that area is running out of space to add new military facilities. The Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach is the target of frequent noise complaints from low-altitude flights and practice carrier landings. To reduce noise complaints, the Navy is attempting to establish a training airstrip in a less populated area.1
Those military bases are major parts of the local economy. Even after the military drawdown during the 1990's at the end of the Cold War, the 2000 census counted 91,615 uniformed military personnel in Hampton Roads. Once again, as in 1990, "more military men and women live in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area than anywhere else in the country... The vast majority of those military men and women are in the Navy -- roughly 80 percent -- and the vast majority live in Virginia Beach and Norfolk, in nearly equal portions."2 (The other top concentrations of military personnel are San Diego, Washington DC, Seattle, and Honolulu.)