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.

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?