in accordance with customary international law in the North Arabian Sea, Dec. 20.
....
search conducted by embarked U.S. Coast Guard personnel.
***Coast Guard? Isn’t their bailiwick supposed to be the US Coasts?
No, the Navy has sent the CG all over the world.
Some is for cross training of the crews, and some is because the CG has a different, nonmilitary mission.
Maybe some other coasties can chime in here.
CG has been sent to dozens of countries, at least since the ‘60s.
I would guess it’s ‘coast guard’ due to the type of ships and training.
> Coast Guard? Isn’t their bailiwick supposed to be the US Coasts? <
Evidently not. We are like the Roman and British Empires of old. We simply have to be everywhere in the world, all the time. You gotta throw everything you got into that.
They prefer to leave US coasts unprotected. Executing the foreign policy of the Saudi throwbacks is a much more pressing concern.
Coast Guard piloted a whole bunch of Higgins boats in WWII.
From Wikipedia:
“As one of the country’s six armed services, the Coast Guard has been involved in every major U.S. war since 1790, from the Quasi-War with France to the Global War on Terrorism.”
My first reaction too...
I worked with a guy who was New London graduate. (And a good engineer.) He spent his entire 20 year career as a navigation officer on Navy ships. He couldn’t break lieutenant-commander because he never had any command experience, and the Navy wouldn’t give him up.
The Coast Guard has small boat expertise useful in interdiction operations. They can be used by the Navy in support of their operations as required by the DOD and will be under Navy command during such operations. As shown on my home page, I spent a year in country during the Vietnam war and lived on an 82 foot patrol boat for the entire year..
Check out this thread I posted on FR 17 years ago:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1197895/posts
A friend of mine crossed the Arctic Circle and the International Date Line in the Coast Guard. That’s how I know they have special semi-hazing type rituals for those doing it their first time.