Defense News reports, “What is the US Army doing in Panama? A bit of everything.”

If Army can be there, maybe Coast Guard could be too. Latin America finds Coast Guard white hulls less offensive than USN gray hulls. It looks like the Coast Guard already has good relations with their Panamanian counterparts.

If we could put a PATFORSWA like squadron of six Webber class WPCs based at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal it would make drug interdiction in the Eastern Pacific a lot easier, and they would be in position to help defend the canal from unconventional attacks.

They might be the first place we should put counter-UxS systems on WPCs. (I think we may have already done that on the cutters that were assigned to PATFORSWA, but we can do better.)

(We might sweeten the deal by making it a joint US/Panamanian squadron by gifting three of the six ships to Panama.)

(Costa Rica might be an alternative. Good relations between the USCG and Costa  Rican CG for decades.)