The Narco Submarine is a very interesting piece of equipment now being used by drug smugglers in Colombia. They have probably been around for quite a while but the first one was captured only a few years ago. This vessel is also known as the Big Foot Submarine, or Drug Sub. They are used by the Colombian drug cartels to smuggle drugs into Mexico where they are transported overland to the United States.
I believe that most of the cocaine coming into the United States is coming this way. There are several other innovative pieces of drug smuggling equipment which are also little known. They include submarines, and special drug torpedoes which are towed behind fishing boats and jettisoned at the first sign of trouble. These torpedoes have buoys and transmitters which will signal their location if they are jettisoned.
The narco submarines are custom made in the Colombian jungle and take quite a while to assemble. They are assembled in complex, well equipped facilities which are expertly hidden and camouflaged.
Even though they are called submarines they are really submersible boats. The term submersible means that ninety percent of the body of the craft is underwater. They have diesel powered engines and cant actually dive as an actual submarine can. Their profile is so close to the water that they are difficult to see with the naked eye. They are normally painted blue which also makes them hard to see when they are in the ocean. In addition they produce almost no wake at all so that they are also very difficult to spot from the air.
Now lets take a look at the next level of the stealth of this drug smuggling craft. Since their profile is so low they are nearly impossible to see with radar, and since they are so small they have a very low sonar profile. You can see that this is certainly a challenge for drug enforcement agencies such as the DEA, and the US Coast Guard. Couple this with the corruption that drug money can buy and you can see the magnitude of this problem.
I find it fascinating that drug smugglers will go to such lengths and that they use so much ingenuity to ply their trade. Our Navy ring customers will be hard pressed to adapt to this new equipment and the new tactics that it employs but I believe that we do posses the technology to do so.
If you have followed my blog at all you may have read about the new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) that the US Navy has now. It seems to me that since this drug smuggling craft cant operate very far from shore which makes the small LCS with its shallow draft the ideal vessel to use to combat them. The LCS can operate well upstream in the rivers and coves that these craft have to use so they will be able to track them more easily than any other craft. The LCS can also be modified to perform a variety of different missions which means that it can be effective in a wide variety of situations.
I will follow the development of these new drug smuggling vessels and keep you informed the best that I can. Military Ring Express