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PACIFIC OCEAN (July 27, 2012) Ships and submarines participating in Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise 2012 are in formation in the waters around the Hawaiian islands. Twenty-two nations, more than 40 ships and submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel are participating in the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise from June 29 to Aug. 3, in and around the Hawaiian Islands. The world’s largest international maritime exercise, RIMPAC provides a unique training opportunity that helps participants foster and sustain the cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world’s oceans. RIMPAC 2012 is the 23rd exercise in the series that began in 1971. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Keith Devinney/Released)

It is apparent the Federal Government has been failing in demonstrating its value to the public. Of all the government agencies, the Coast Guard is among the leaders in keeping the public informed, but, even there, it seems we could be doing better.

I am a regular user of web sites that are charged with telling the stories of various agencies. Almost every day I go through my “Recommended Blogs” list of 30 web sites looking for news that may be of interest to our readers. The list includes:

• Four Coast Guard run sites
• Joint Interagency Task Force South
• Three Combatant commander sites–for NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM, and INDOPACOM
• Four numbered Fleet commands–5th, 4th, 3rd, and 2nd

12 of the 30 are government sites and really the commercial sites tend to be more interesting.

The Coast Guard sites are generally good. MyCG is for internal consumption and United States Coast Guard News is good for both internal and external audiences. Both seem to have something new almost every day. Acquisitions Directorate (CG-9) is more specialized and less frequent, but I pass along virtually everything they post because it is all important and tends not to repetitive.

Unfortunately Defense Video Information Distribution Service Coast Guard News Wire seems to be underutilized. Their latest video was posted February 2, over a month ago. This would seem to be a good venue for providing videos that might appear on TV on a slow news day (although we don’t seem to be having many of those). When I use a video from this site, I usually pull the same videos off of YouTube because they are more easily accessible, but the site does alert me to the existence of the videos. Unfortunately there just isn’t much content there.

I would have thought Joint Interagency Task Force South would have had a lot of Coast Guard related stories, and much of their content is, but currently, the latest story was posted Nov. 19, 2024 and the one before that was Nov. 5, 2024. The one before that was August 27, 2024. Seven stories in the last year. That’s not frequent enough for most news agencies to bother looking at the site.

NORTHCOM’s on line magazine The Watch adds new content frequently. Most is not Coast Guard or Naval related. I think more of it should be, but it is probably not surprising since NORTHCOM is also NORAD.

SOUTHCOM, I would have thought, would have a lot of Coast Guard related content. Their web site has had four posts about the set up of the retention center at Gitmo 4 to 6 February, but before that they were a lot more quiet. Two posts in January; two posts in December; four in November; two in October; eight in September which included UNITAS, but there was never even a wrap-up at the conclusion of UNITAS. I had to go back to June 6,2024 to find a Coast Guard related story, and there were very few Navy related stories.

INDOPACOM”s Indo-Pacific Defense Forum seems to be written more for an international audience than to inform US citizens, and as such it does an excellent job. Much of it is Naval and coast guard related.

Second Fleet has not had a single story this calendar year. Last story was December 3, 2024, eleven weeks ago.

Third Fleet does not seem to have anything to report except units deploying or returning from deployment.

Fourth Fleet, you would expect to have a lot of Coast Guard related stories, since most of their ships are white with racing stripes, but you would be wrong. There were 14 stories in all of 2024, only a little over one a month. Not one story about a Coast Guard unit. No wrap up following UNITAS2024, I entered Coast Guard in the search function for this site and got this, “Sorry, no results found for ‘coast guard’. Try entering fewer or more general search terms.” They have, until recently showing interest in showing how they are helping prepare GITMO to receive immigrants, generally had any stories of any kind only infrequently. Remarkably I got this when I entered UNITAS (their premier annual international exercise) in the search function, “Sorry, no results found for ‘UNITAS’. Try entering fewer or more general search terms.”

Fifth Fleet, US Naval Forces Central Command, is something of a bright spot. They add a story about once a week, but perhaps more importantly the stories tend to be more operationally focused. Coast Guard Fast Response Cutters featured regularly.