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On the frontline against China, the US Coast Guard is taking on missions the US Navy can't do
The Coast Guard is stepping up its Pacific presence, sailing to "places that move the needle a little bit," the service's top officer said in December.
International
Competition with China has drawn more Pentagon resources to the Pacific, but the most visible US military presence there may be the branch that is outside of the Defense Department.
The ships and personnel of the US Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, are spending more time in the region conducting missions for which other branches aren't well suited, balancing that increasing demand with a lengthy list of other responsibilities.
"What we do, it's not big in numbers, but it's, I think, pretty significant in contribution. We get access. We can go places," Adm. Karl Schultz, commandant of the Coast Guard, said at a Navy League event in December.
Schultz singled out the cutter Munro, which in October returned from a 102-day Indo-Pacific deployment. Munro trained with allies and partners in the East and South China Seas and "exercised" a memorandum of understanding with Taiwan, Schultz said. Munro also sailed through the Taiwan Strait, which, like past transits, was condemned by China.
"The Chinese [are] pretty excited when the Coast Guard's over there training with the Taiwanese," Schultz said last month. "These are places that move the needle a little bit."