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."

Comments

legalize it

[jollyreaper]

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.

Why not legalize coke?

[failedlogic]

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.

Next step: drone boats

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Acoustic Signatures

[BoRegardless]

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.

Re:Acoustic Signatures

[Nidi62]

Don't forget about the P-3 Orion. These were designed and built to track and sink Soviet subs during the Cold War. Now, the Soviets had some pretty noisy boats, especially their diesels, but these things have to be just as noisy as they were. DHS already has several P-3s, and the Navy still has well over 100. They can loiter on station for hours and could easily detect these subs on the surface with radar/sonar and underwater with sonar. The article says it's hard to detect with sonar because of the Kevlar/carbon-fiber used to make it, but I would assume that passive sonar can easily pick up the screw noise. Recent events in Libya have shown that P-3s can engage and hit targets as small as 100ft with ASMs. I'd imagine on the surface these subs would have at least 50ft above water. And if not, they can always just drop a torpedo. However, I'd say it is more likely that they'd work in tandem with a Coast Guard cutter or a Navy ship and would send them to interdict the sub. The article says the batteries can let it stay submerged for up to 18 hours without recharging(which subs have to surface to recharge), but I wonder if it can really stay under for that long, or if it would have to surface sooner to vent air.

Re:What's funny is

[leathered]

That would be the street price. The sub would transport high purity (>90%) coke, by the time it gets to the consumer it's usually around 10-15%.

However the authorities always grossly over-estimate the value of a haul. Looks good for their totals, and helps prosecutors secure higher sentences.

Re:What's funny is

[SnarfQuest]

Right and legal drugs don't have an underground market.

Ummm... Tobacco, alcohol are legal drugs, but there is plenty of black market for both.

Re:i am for the legalization of marijuana

[IgnoramusMaximus]

So, in your view, you prefer to COMBINE the effects of the "highly addictive substances" which "entrap lives" with all the side-effects of prohibition, since the prohibition has no chance of actually working in practice because in order to be effective, the counter measures require essentially a totalitarian police state apparatus to be erected, which also presents additional power concentration and profit opportunities for the "authorities" - see also: private prisons etc, not to mention dispensing with all of these inconvenient civil liberties and personal freedoms, Habeas Corpus and the like hindrances for the Holy Crusaders of Anti-Addiction.

So if you are intellectually honest with us, you also advocate a complete Big Brother 24/7/365 all-encompassing surveillance totalitarianism, since it is the only possible scenario under which the supposed "benefits" (i.e. no addicts) of the prohibition could ever be realized. That is, of course, if you are a believer in totalitarian police states and think Orwell's 1984 was an instruction manual.

All to "save us" from ourselves.

No?

Not exactly.

[khasim]

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.

Re:What's funny is

[Opportunist]

If you worry about the addicts, outlaw tobacco and alcohol. Let's not be hypocritical here, ok? As long as there's far more addictive substances legal and less addictive and damaging substances are illegal, let's not talk about "moral".

The difference is that there's an industry behind those two drugs and that industry is legal and pays taxes, and most of all there's public support for them. Start a campaign for pot akin to the one against smoking today and you'll see MJ legalized in a breeze.

But as long as there's little incentive from various industries to legalize anything but what's already legal and firmly in the hands of a few tobacco and booze corporations we won't see any change in that.

Re:What's funny is

[cusco]

The banksters, the politicians' actual bosses. Over one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) was laundered through the US banking system last year (yes, we ARE the world's largest money launderer), about half of that from drugs. The profit margin on money laundering is enormous, ranging from 10-15 percent, a business that the major banks call "private banking".

Think for a moment what happens to the US banking industry if drugs were to be legalized.
$1,000,000,000,000 * 10% = $1,000,000,000 / 2 = $500,000,000
Do you think that the banksters are going to let politicians wipe out a five hundred billion dollar revenue stream just because it's the sane thing to do?