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Drug Runners Perfect Long-Range Subs
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Authorities have captured a 74-foot camouflaged submarine — nearly twice as long as a city bus — with twin propellers and a 5-foot conning tower that, with a crew of four to six, has a maximum operational range of 6,800 nautical miles on the surface, can go 10 days without refueling and was probably designed to ferry cocaine underwater to Mexico. The vessel carries a payload of 9 tons of cocaine with a street value of about $250 million and uses a GPS chart plotter with side-scan capabilities, a high-frequency radio, an electro-optical periscope and an infrared camera mounted on the conning tower—visual aids that supplement two miniature windows in the makeshift cockpit. "This is the most sophisticated sub we've seen to date," says Jon Wallace who has headed the Personal Submersibles Organization, or Psubs, for 15 years. "It's a very good design in terms of shape and controls." In the meantime jungle shipbuilders continue to perfect their craft."
The DEA perfects the Depth Charge.
The number of people I know who think drugs are legal now because of the medical Marijuana laws. Let me be the first to say though, 9 tons of processed plant matter should not be worth $250 million. Isn't that $14k/lb? Who the heck is snorting it at that price? A sub is a small price to pay for that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
i guess that's a sign of the economy, now they are smuggling the drugs to Mexico instead of from Mexico.
Sounds like the kind of thing that takes more than a few engineers to build. I wonder what toys they hand out at recruitment fairs?
Can we just fucking legalise and tax drugs, rather than let murderous druglords make billions off the black market? It 's a choice of two evils, but at least the corporations will pay tax.
I can't believe people think that if you pretend it doesn't happen it will go away. Let's fucking deal with it using scientific enquiry and logical, rational arguments related to economics and crime. Emotional appeals to 'the evil drugs' are a fucking waste of time. It's a shame that it is political suicide to even entertain ideas about legalisation, thanks to all the fuckwit voters out there. Mostly old people stuck in their conservative ways. I can't wait for these people to die off and we can start learning lessons from history and move forward as a species.
Can you imagine how bad the cartels would be hurting if this stuff got legalized? You'd better believe they'd be buying up senators left and right to keep it banned.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
This should be motive enough to legalize some drugs or at least restrict sales such that it would stop the South Americans from shipping coke to the US.
Once naval and intelligence experts become concerned of the sub building capabilities and detection of these subs it acknowledges that this poses a risk to US security. I read earlier articles that indicated ex-Russian sub designers were being hired by the Cartels to build their sub.
I don't think there's any major worry of these subs being virtually undetectable like the current American subs or carrying nukes or torpedoes but I think there might be a concern that some of these people would go to work for some other country at some point. Hell, if they're building these kinds of subs in the jungle, I'd be concerned about what they can do if they don't have to be so conspicuous.
"The Hunt for Green April"
I've been building autonomous vessels since 2004 and the very first potential customer was a guy who wanted to smuggle weed and cigs from Switzerland to Italy with one. Had to wait a few months for an actual legit customer and I get that sort of call/email twice a year on average. I could've made a lot of money, but eh.
I've heard of side-scan radar and side-scan sonar. What the fuck is side-scan GPS? Wouldn't the vessel have to be on the surface to receive a GPS signal, or if submerged, extend some sort of antenna above the ocean surface? What in the name of Cthulhu are they scanning laterally for? Does the US Navy have a secret GPS constellation that orbits underwater or something? Methinks the writer studied journalism at the University of Make Shit Up.
Wake me up when they're delivering drugs via spaceships. Then I will be impressed.
that when you restricts something its value sky rockets and make people rich by dealing in that item. Mind you the DEA and company probably rake in more money then the cartels so there's no reason to make that item legal.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
By having these drug laws, we provide incentive for criminals to circumvent them. It's no surprise that these drug rings have used more sophisticated methods to smuggle their products into the U.S. The more we ramp up "protecting" our population from drugs, the more drug lords ramp up their methods of importing drugs. Now that these methods exist, there's no reason why terrorists can't use it to piggyback dangerous devices. In summary, add another "+1" to the long list of negatives stemming from our War on Drugs.
You can bet the USN & CIA detection equipment from sea floor mounted sensors will be able to pick up the known propulsion signatures.
Sounds transmit underwater for very long distances which will limit the number of sensors particularly if "well placed" at known transit spots.
It won't be long before they can pretty much find, follow and intercept as they wish.
I could swear I saw an article on slashdot from no longer than a year ago about this.
i think psd, psilocybin, peyote, etc: they should be legal too, as they are not addictive. although use is very dangerous (walk out a window, etc.)
i am not for the legalization of meth, coke, heroin
yes, i am aware of all the prohibition type problems associated with these drugs being outlawed: empowered mafia, alienated users, etc.
the problem is, by my determination, legalization will result in a larger number of users. this problem, in my mind, is more potent than all the bad side effects of prohibition. so prohibition should continue, with highly addictive drugs
those who are for legalizing everything seem to conveniently forget that the addictive potential of some drugs. look: people have problems. people always have problems: career, money, reliationships, etc. this causes pain. the solution to those problems is never to turn to substance abuse, and yet people always turn to substance abuse, to blot out reality and the pain of it. of course, you add addiction, and now you've just created more problems. its an attempt at escapism that results in being more trapped. so some people, by saying the highly addictive substances should be legalized, seem to be content saying that an entire subclass of humanity should effectively be denied the right to free will. because what is most certain about the relationship between drug addiction and freedom to me, is that no government ever existed that can rob you of freedom the way drug addiction does. in fact, imagine the most orwellian government possible, and it will be a government that uses highly addictive drugs to control the masses. highly addictive drugs are the greatest enemy to freedom in the history of the world. if you don't understand this, you understand nothing
in other words, when it comes to highly addictive substances, i am for continued outlawing, in the name of freedom. because highly addictive substances, let loos eupon society, will entrap countless lives. the drug does it
i expect anyone who responds to this comment to conveniently forget, marginalize, or belittle the powerful addictive properties of substances like meth, heroin, coke. typical. and wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you cave in to the pressures of cartels and legalize drugs, the next step is giving in to terrorists and mandating Islamic law.
Look at Rosa Parks, we caved in for her and it's been a slippery slope ever since.
I've been around rich people and around poor people. Almost without exception, the poor people have been more honest and a better class of people.
You are extremely naive if you don't think that a large percentage of the drug money isn't being laundered into the hands of the 'legitimate' people who run the government and wear three piece suites. That is why the drug trade is allowed to go on. It is making too many people too much money. If there was a real desire to shut down the trade, it could be shut down overnight. It would be nice if drugs were legalized, but i don't think it will happen as long as so many people are making so much money.
Think about it. The coast guard and the DEA are the drug runners best friends. Who else would artificially inflate the price of these plants. Likewise the DEA, and coast guard have to love the drug runners. Their jobs, and all the neat toys they get to play with are all purchased to fight this endless war on drugs.
When prohibition was finally lifted, it was the rum runners who came to power in the USA (Kennedy et. al) The ironic thing is that even when alcohol was legitimately taxed, it was still the rum runners who were making the money (Kennedy et. al). The only difference is the instead of the crooked individuals being gangsters they became politicians.
Outlaws are going to become fucking billionaires. They are going to spend a lot of that money arming their own private armies. Thousands of innocent people will be slaughtered and displaced.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
as the world+dog seems relieved/hopeful to know the truth, the chosen ones & royals continue to deny the very existence of any of us.
The crime syndicates obviously want the drug to STAY illegal, as that ensures their revenue stream...so they funnel their wealth through ostensibly legitimate fronts into anti-drug lobbyists coffers.
Also, legitimate pharmaceutical companies don't want competition from farmers who can grow cheap-and-easy plants with natural medicinal properties, so they lobby to keep them illegal as well.
And the sellers of legal recreational drugs (alcohol, tobacco, salvia, kava, etc) don't want any more competing products on the market.
There are probably others I haven't thought of. It just boils down to profit-protection, as usual.
And as always there are the overwhelmingly-popular batshit-insane religious groups who think that you can save a soul by making bad things illegal, and outright refuse to listen to rational argument.
Can we just fucking legalise and tax drugs, rather than let murderous druglords make billions off the black market? It 's a choice of two evils, but at least the corporations will pay tax.
Hold the phone... Now I may of only had a past selling cannabis, and smuggling hash, but I "always" paid my taxes. Twice in the case of Massachusetts when I would buy the "Drug Stamps", and again when I paid my taxes -state and federal- as one normally would. Then I would donate to my local schools.
I may of risked prison, broken the law, and (insert paranoia jokes here) always waiting for the day I would be busted. But you "never" fuck with the IRS. Because while the DEA may not catch on, the IRS will truly fuck you up.
Last I checked, with the famed Dutch-Irish sandwich, most corporations don't really pay all that much tax.
Imagine what would happen if the moon were made of cocaine. We would already have extremely cheap spacecraft making daily trips to the moon and back, carrying tons of moon rocks. It wouldn't take long for our satellite to disappear from our skies into our noses.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"Authorities have captured a 74-foot camouflaged submarine."
Something tells me it's not quite perfect yet.
Per capita alcohol consumption in the US went down.
I don't have a link for that, but I get my numbers from a chart I saw in a museum at Mt. Vernon. Alcohol consumption per capita was massive at the end of the 19th century, but through Prohibition it stayed flat and when Prohibition ended, it decreased.
My first guess would be that the vicarious thrill of being a law-breaker increased consumption. I suspect that something like that is also true of drug consumption in the US. Take away the thrill of eating the forbidden fruit and consumption may just well drop.
The cartels already have the capital. If drugs get legalized, they'll just move more heavily into kidnapping and slavery.
Same thing as after Prohibition, organized crime just moved into other territories. There is no way to turn back the clock and prevent the cartels from coming to power in the first place.
Not that this is an argument against legalization, mind you. It's just the observation that one particular argument for legalization doesn't hold that much weight.
http://narcoticnews.com/World-Record-Cash-Seizure-205+-Million-Dollars-in-Mexico-City.php
I guess they got help and supply from north korea in exchange for hard money == $$ , these subs can also be used to circumvent the international embargo, and they are not that expensive than their real minisubs. Think about it China is North Koreas biggest trading partner and needs foreign currency to survive .. and NK can make trades through china as a middleman. NK also tried to deliver "things" to Iran, the transport ship was chased by U.S. vessels NK even threaten SK+US with escalating war even to a nuclear level.
And NK has skilled engineers, from intercontinental rockets to nuclear fission bombs/reactors, up to NK built mini subs.
I think the drug bosses should open source the design of the vessel ;)
How much cocaine do I have to buy to get to keep the wrapper, these "subs"?
If they're not being used to smuggle the cash back to the jungle, maybe I can get the sub here in NYC, rather than let it swim home and possibly get caught.
How much for just the sub?
--
make install -not war
It's not a choice between two evils at all. There is nothing evil about adult human beings choosing voluntarily what to consume.
Gorbachev's changes were more about limited access. You could still buy vodka but you could only buy limited quantities and at limited times. Which drove sales to the black market. Which hurt the Russian economy.
Hell, that's kind of like Washington state's laws as of 10 years ago when you couldn't buy vodka on a Sunday because all the liquor stores are state-owned.
Alcohol (and other drugs) are complex subjects that cannot be "solved" with simplistic solutions.
Unfortunately, most politicians can only think in the most simplistic of sound-bites so that's all we ever get.
The "gangs" will try to find other sources of income.
And they will fight over those.
The problem for the "gangs" is that nothing else has the mark-up that illegal drugs do. They just won't make much money.
Not to mention that the majority of drug dealers live with Mom because they do NOT make much money.
So the "gangs" will, probably, switch to standard organized crime staples such as "protection racks", "illegal gambling" and "smuggling" other items such as cigarettes to turn a profit from the tax differentials between states/cities.
The core problem is that no one understands basic politics and economics. It's all about the local people establishing their own political and economic system inside of the USofA's national/state system. Which leads to their own "police force" and "judicial system".
Now we only need to figure out how to make drug smuggling to Mars profitable and we'll have manned interplanetary space flight in no time.
...the source of this whole raging drug war river is "ZOMG, we can't let Joe Nobody in Pootville get high!"
Why aren't they using their skills to make small personal subs for the consumer market? There's lots of idiots out there who would love their own sub, but won't pay the 1/2 mil it takes to get a small one.
Then they'd have a nice, legit business to use as a cover for their drug subs, and could probably increase the quality and reduce the cost of them.
Never mind that, it'd be interesting to put an American sub to hunting these things for a month or so, and see how many they find. I'd bet zero, showing how cost effective a small fleet of these things, each running on batteries and carrying one or two missiles or torpedos, would be against pretty much anyone.
Sure, the cartels are alreadly invested in other market niches.
But if the grug niche were cut off, they wouldn't mobilize further into other niches?
The Wikipedia article is pretty cool. Those guys are getting inventive. Then again, with a QUARTER BILLION FREAKING DOLLARS at stake, so would I.
Semi-submersibles are hard to spot from patrol ships, but are easy to detect from the air. To address this problem, a new concept was adopted by smugglers. Instead of a full-featured self-propelled ship, a "torpedo"-style cargo container is used with a ballast tank (submersion control) to keep it at about 30 m under water while being towed by a regular fishing boat. If a patrol ship is spotted, the "torpedo" cargo container is released. While still submerged, it automatically releases one buoy concealed as a wooden log and equipped with a location transmitter system for a second support fishing vessel to retrieve it and continue the cocaine delivery.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
One of the problems is that with ANY regulation, there is a chance for profit from the black market.
The core problem is that the "gangs" are attempting to set up their own political / economic systems with themselves in charge. They will pursue whatever generates income. Even if that income is only enough to purchase weapons and ammo.
Try this: find a kid in high school and ask her what's easier to buy: booze or weed.
If weed is so easy to purchase today, it doesn't follow that legalization will create a significant increase is usage.
Get away from the bias of wanting to believe that legalization will significantly or dramatically increase drug use and abuse, and you're left with the realization that the current form of government addressing the ill of drug abuse is far worse than the abuse itself.
damaged by dogma
at least the corporations will pay tax.
What if GE got into the drug trade?
GE pays taxes in the country where the profits are "made". GE engineers its business so that the profits are generated in countries other than the US, countries that have lower tax rates than the US. So if GE entered the drug trade the Columbian subsidiary of GE would sell the drugs to the US subsidiary of GE at about the US retail rate. So all the profits would be "made" by the Columbian subsidiary and only Columbia would collect taxes on the drug profits. The global business would be engineered so that the US subsidiary just breaks even.
Three words: Private prison lobbyists
Kick Backs
Or perhaps only one word: Bribery...
They used chinese parts for the thing and if they got caught taking the drugs to china, they'd be executed.
(sunglasses) ...submarine patents?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
As I always say when the drug debate comes up: there are alcoholics, there are people who binge drink on weekends and there are people who don't drink at all, and alcohol is LEGAL. Why would it be different with drugs? It is a fallacy that addiction rates will explode if legalized.
Furthermore, the whole argument on an unmanageable addiction and health crisis due to drug legalization is also erroneous. In contrast, there is now an existing and potentially amplified health crisis due to obesity (diabetes, heart and cardiovascular diseases, knee and hip replacements, etc) and nobody is shutting down Mickey D's.
Ought to make nice target practice for US subs.
I liked the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cobra_(novel)/.
GE has been in the drug trade for years, as well as the large scale war trade, and the large scale cancer trade... the "evil drug lords" are the amateurs that corporate america will eat for lunch and have their country's resources for desert, and the remaining devalued land for a snack.
I seriously doubt 250 million. Still, its probably more than enough to pay for the cost of the sub...
or their kids will see a similar story about smugglers and their unregulated spacecraft.
"this ship, nicknamed the Falcon after an obscure science fiction reference, was discovered hidden in orbit on the dark side of the moon..."
"No good deed goes unpunished"
... where there is money, there is a way.
At least i can be secure in the knowledge that my dope will always get to me just fine.
I wonder if the crashed economy is slowing down delivery's.
That SHOULD be the end goal. But wait one moment.
Sadly, no, they won't.
Which brings me back to the other point. There will ALWAYS be a segment that cannot participate in the established system due to some reason. These people WILL attempt to establish themselves as the head of their own government. Even if they can only manage "warlordism" and "rule" through violence in their segment.
Think about the mafia and longshoremen or teamsters.
Actually, you do. The mafia runs alcohol from cheap states/cities to expensive states/cities. That's why part of the local government's alcohol control board investigates where the local bars are buying their alcohol from. If they don't have legitimate receipts, they are fined.
The same with hijacking a shipment of cigarettes.
They're just trying to get to The Island!!
I wonder if they allow women abord
While its pretty cool that some folks built a personal sub, looking at the pictures I am not sure how easy they might find "volunteers" to pilot the thing. I mean much of it looks held together with string and duct tape, though from the outside it looks impressive enough.
What I find funny is that the Drug runners probably have more subs than Ecuador!
... they wouldn't have gotten caught.
Where's the mod points of a few days ago when I need 'em? Instead, I had 'em for 'Fools' Day!
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman