“Drug Subs” could carry terrorists and WMD
Good report, with video, by Fox’s Adam Housley about a new threat in the waters. It’s actually not that new, given that small submarines were used back in the Revolutionary War, but this new batch is stealthy and barely detectable.
There is some concern within our national security forces that these subs could eventually, of not already, carry weapons and/or terrorists north without detection. Also, if the drug runners sink the sub, or burn it and the evidence is lost, then the Coast Guard is required to rescue the drug runners and then safely release them on shore. They USCG is working with the DHS and DOJ to get the law changed.
Question: are they really submarines if they have to stay six inches above the water? I think that’s cheating. No sympathy-submarines, losers. Either it dives deep, or it’s just an overloaded homemade Sea-doo.
Seriously, though, this is actually a long-established trend. Part of the challenge for the Colombian gangs is getting their product to the Mexican cartels (or whoever) who will take it over the border here, and that’s not always easy. That’s where the subs come in. Here’s a picture of a Russian-designed submarine that was caught way up in the Andes in, I think, the late 1990’s. The cartels were putting it together miles above sea level and would eventually have brought it down to the shore.
More recently, a buddy of mine…ahem, a source in law enforcement sent along a report about a sub was captured by the Colombian Navy in November:
It looks somewhat like the one in Housley’s video, if a little more streamlined. Here’s the text accompanying that picture, which ties this drug-sub fleet to Obama’s fans in the FARC:
Navy Discovers 17 Submarines Since 2005, Each Worth up to Two Million Dollars — Vice Admiral Edgar Cely said that specialized personnel and knowledge are needed to design and build the craft. Cely indicated that the clandestine shipyards are definitely the property of the northern Valle del Cauca cartel, which runs them through criminal gangs and the 29th and 30th Fronts of the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] and through an alliance with the cartels of Mexico. According to Cely, the use of technology dates back to at least 1993, including camouflage paint applied to fishing boats, copying the technology to build go-fast speedboats, and now submarines. “We have found some craft that barely float, others that were very slow to navigate, and some that had to be rowed.” The admiral indicated that master builders in fiberglass are needed, and they are paid with the cartel’s drug money. He also pointed out that the Pacific is preferred because the waters are calm most of the year up to the coasts of Central America.
Meanwhile DHS is trying to enlist recreational boaters in a sort of “neighborhood watch” program, keeping an eye on coastal shenanigans. They seem genuinely concerned about the possibility of a maritime USS Cole-type attack by suicide boats. Not sure how this will affects you outboarders, but keep an eye peeled for submarines full of white powder and Boston Whalers full of dynamite.
Actually, if you’re in Arkansas, the latter might just be legitimate fishermen.
P.S. Nice catch by the Coasties!
UPDATE: Seems to be a little problem with commenting. We’ve had an onslaught of casino spammers this week and the filters may have been tightened up a little too much. I’ve notified the powers that be. AM UPDATE: Fixed.
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Only if like their cousins in rural Pennsylvania, they are also clinging to their guns and Bibles.
Privateers.
I wouldn’t doubt them sneaking terrorist in. They’ll do anything for Money.
Kaboom! where they make em, game over.
Interesting. These subs remind me of the ones the Norks build. The Norks have the world’s largest submarine fleet, all designed to infiltrate commandos and built quite unconventionally and often very low-tech.
Axis of evil, anyone?
Actually they look really cool. Any idea where I can get one? It would be great for duck hunting and maybe even fishing in some of the swamps and inland waterways. How cool would that be on the weekends huh?
Chertoff will look into this after his hair grows back.
I’m an ex-submariner, and maybe I could get a job with the Colombian drug cartels. I wonder what kind of a benefits package they have =).
Actually, there are a variety of submarines available on the open market. Depending on how much you have to spend, for about 25K you can build your own using a Kitteridge kit, or you can have one constructed for you for around 75K.
If your taste is more expensive, U.S. Submarines offers a 213 foot transatlantic model with its own mini-sub for several million. Picture a mega-yacht capable of diving to 1000 feet.
Speaking of mega-yachts, aprx 5% of the 7000 plus multi-million dollar mega-yachts have personal submarines on board, with more on order. Mini subs are now the toys of the rich and famous.
While we are not quite at point of having mom and pop weekend submariners, we get closer every day. Several private individuals have successfully constructed and lauched their own personal submarines. We rarely hear of the failures (wonder why).
Anyone considering constructing their own submarine should closely follow the building & equipment standards of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (AMSE) Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (PVHO) Code.
This is an issue that ’some’ of us are very interested in. However, many simply stick their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the implications.
In the town where I was born,
Lived a man who sold the drugs,
And he told us of his life,
How he sold drugs from submarines,
So we sailed on to the sun,
Till we found a sea of coca,
And we sold the white powder,
From our yellow submarine,
We sell drugs from a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We sell drugs from a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.
Apologies to the Beatles.
A viable submarine for smuggling doesn’t have to be enclosed even. It just has to carry a couple of people and lots of stuff. Since the people can be very expendable, but have high incentives, they are liable to find creature comforts way down the list of design criteria.
Compared to aircraft, these are probably really cheap, and the skills needed to maintain and deploy them are very low.
Maybe we should think of them as “voluntary target drones” for our ASW guys! We could develop a cheap, little-bitty torpedo…
Is this something that they consider a “new” threat? The idea of running drugs via submarine goes back a long way…ever see 007’s License to Kill? And I’m certain we can trace the idea much further back.
We have borders, and not all of them are land. Their security is the main responsibility of the federales in Washington DC.
I don’t think they get the message yet.
I agree with TMoney, this is not a new threat. It is interesting that this is getting media attention now. North Korea evidently provided their designs for one or two man subs to the drug smugglers in the past. Now there is improved capability and carrying capacity. Why is the MSM only now discovering this? Is it because Homeland Security ‘experts’ have only now found out about the threat? They are so sharp!
This story reminds me of how the Nazi U-boats could spot New York City by the lights from Coney Island.
I’m not as worried about drug smugglers as I am terrorists with microsubs and the Chinese with their super-silent diesels.
We’ve come a long wat since the H. L. Hunley.
9/11 proved that enough crazy hell bent terrorists can succeed. Building great fences protecting our borders is not the way to protect against them.
Those “mini subs” were put into more practical action by the Italians during WW II. The “Maiale” (Pig in Italian) was used successfully to attack allied ships anchored at harbors. They attached “Limpet” mines to the sides of the ships’ hulls, with delayed detonators, giving the sabotage operators time to escape. Nothing more than a modified torpedo, adapted to carry two operators. They also used the torpedo’s warhead, also with a delayed fuse, by sinking it to the bottom of the harbor, just below the targeted ship’s hull. Since the space between the ship’s bottom and the harbor floor was very confined (compared to open and deeper waters) the results were catastrophic. Here’s a picture of a “Maile” model:
http://happy.ap.teacup.com/runchickens/img/1179407578.jpg
Here’s a site with some good pictures of a modern and more advanced system, better known as a SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV):
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems//ship/sdv.htm
The South Koreans have intercepted and killed North Koreans operators (that means COMMUNISTS to you liberals) attempting to infiltrate their shores using similar systems. A sub does not necessarily have to dive deep to be defined as such. If it can be submerged just a few feet off the surface and stay there for a while, it can be considered as such.
Tom Clancy’s novel “A Clear and Present Danger” should have included some of those “pigs”. It would have his novel a heck of more interesting.
Rio
Semper Fi!
I’ve read on another site that the USCG, working together with the Colombian military and satellite technology for a while now, are remarkably accurate at hunting down these FARC puppies the moment they leave the coastline. FARC has to scuttle them with millions of dollars in powder aboard as soon as the military arrives.
hey # 9, sirknob
thanx for the tip on the PVHO code on building subs.
for those who to check it out…. here it is.
http://catalog.asme.org/home.cfm?SEARCH=pvho&SEARCHWITHIN=1&CATEGORY=CS&IMAGE.X=5&IMAGE.Y=4
They aren’t submarines, they’re remotely controlled naval targets. I’d like to see what a few depth charges would do to one!
I live in the region and the mini sub trafficing trade is big business throughout Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
At least once a month a sub is caught and put on public display. Some are quite crude and probably would not make it more than 10 miles in open seas but others are much more sophisticated than the exaMples shown in this post.
I see this as threat #1 to our country from not only the terrorist exploit perspective but also the tons of poison that reach our shores to feed the drug use and associated crimes which are a tragedy on the scale of 9/11 (death from drug crimes, accidents by those under the influence, overdoses and from complications of drug use) on a weekly basis
Response to #8
I too served in our nations submarine force but no incentive or perk could lead me to even consider or kid about supporting these murdering crooks and cronies.
You attempt at humor is hereby labeled as FAIL.
Let me paraphrase the views from one of my extended family members, a former US attorney and now a federal judge:
The cross US border smuggling is handled by semi autonomous suborganisations and sometimes geographicly local gangs within the mostly Northern Mexican drug cartels
While it is true these smuggling gangs are beholden to and under the lure of monetary gains for bieng contacted by a number of organized criminal cartels in Mexico, It is not in their self interests to expand into alliance with radical muslim terrorists.
They guard and defend their operations very closely to maintain control. Their cross US border smuggling activity is very lucrative, but is extremely risky. Once they get a working method they want to keep it up for as long as possible, which in this climate is often of a limited time.
The profits are so great that the smugglers are reluctant to do anything that impedes their core business. Assisting radical muslim terrorists is not in their interests. They are not stupid businessmen. They have seen a negatve impact on their operations since 9/11 as the US has stepped up homeland security and pursued terrorist organisations internationally.
The judge explained to me that in the intial year or so following 9/11 the diversion of resources to focus on Al queda and Iraq created an enforcement vacume that the smugglers exploited. But the steppped up international enforcement on terrorists and beefed up homeland security ultimately had a costly impact on their smuggling. At the most basic self interest level the smugglers know they gain nothing from supporting US bound terrorists. We are the their great cash cow and they have long term business plans. The chaos and backlash from terrorists attacks does not serve them.
It is his opinion that the Mexican cartels linked with US smuggling have been and probably will remain resistant to any direct cooperation with radical terrorists.
I even asked if the terrorists somehow could get a contacted load of weapon materials or people passed into US surreptitiously along the smuggling chain through Mexico. And he said maybe, but it is highly doubtful they could do it without knowledge by the participnats and therefor the leaders of the gangs that control the cross US border smuggling.
I think the Mexican cartels are our enemies and commit acts of heinous terroism within their own country. But they are very different animals with very different motives then al qaida and other radical muslim terrorists. They have no ideological alignment and little common business interests.
While it is true that they have become much better at tracking even small fast boats, the net result of the current effort does not put a dent into the movement of drugs up into Mexico or elsewhere for smuggling to the US. They still catch a very minor percentage of what gets through. And as in the past, once one route or method is clamped down upon another one is developed.
Realizing some efficacy in our interdiction efforts is going to remain very difficult even if it is neccesary and worthwhile.
Sisyphus–
I think your judge is mostly right. The cartels’ and the terrorists’ incentives are mostly not compatible.
However, they have been involved in smuggling Chinese immigrants before. And as that case suggests, sometimes they miscalculate.
Then there are people like Farida Goolam Ahmed, who parallel the cartel’s operation and specialize in South Asian immigrants.
And there are Hispanic jihadists. AQ top operative Shukrijuma is supposed to be passing himself off as Mexican. And then there were the dudes from Guyana. They could slip through the immigrant pipeline without a lot of scrutiny.
Besides that there’s the bigger problem of the shadow-world the Mexican cartels/smugglers create–where fake ID’s are cheap and enforcement is politically discouraged. When someone like Farida Ahmed comes across the border, what is the extra incentive to get involved? The best example of that is the Falls Church, Virginia 7-11 where some of the 9-11 hijackers got their fake IDs.
And then there’s the point that the drugs the cartels run, and the money-laundering schemes they use, may support jihadist groups in South America or elsewhere.
So while I’d agree that the specific case of, say, the Tijuana cartel knowingly taking an Al-Qaeda jihadist and his dirty bomb across the border is remote, I do believe the problems are closely connected.
Forget the micro subs,
we have already had threats from homebuilt subs right here in our harbors.
Here are more pics.
You make some valid points.
This is so in Mexico. All sorts of criminal activity related to smuggling is tolerated officially. It is quite possible for individual jihadist terrorists to make some use of the smuggling pipeline into the US. I think the people pipeline is more likely then moving contraband though.
It is also quite possible for some element of a jihadist network to develop a working relationship with a mexican smuggling gang without their true allegences be known. Say a jihad sympathetic businesmman willing to allow his services to be periodicly used by terrorits.
This is the exemplified by, though not proven by facts, in the first case you link about the Chinese immigrants. The illegal immigrabts while being cleared of terrorist links were flown by a mexican national in a plane rented from a naturailized middle eastern Texas Flight school owner who caters to Saudi Arabians.
Some of your other examples have broken links and I will have to look up sources later.
But here again the interests of the Mexican smuggling cartels and the possible Jihadist mixed up with supplying drugs for funding diverge. The Mexican cartels have long been willing to do business with SA drug suppliers that use the leftist guerrilas. So you could broadly define them as enabelers but that is not quite accurate. The US border smuggling catrtels political interests are quite narrow though and revolve solely around continuing their criminal enterprise. In the past, previous incarnations of US bound transhippers in Latin American have refused to provide open refuge to Columbian drug organisations when they suffered crackdowns for their local terrorism. However they did not stop doing regular business with the columbian cartels.
Again the more likely involvement is in areas where jihadists and mexican smuggling gangs have overlapping interest. Money laundering would be an example. Both the smugglers and the terrorists may make use of the same system. The smugglers may not even know or care in this circumstance of the true alliegence of the provider of the services.
A Mk. 48 ADCAP will make quick work of these subs.
Bravo Zulu U.S.C.G. !!!
Honor among thieves, right? :/
It boils down that we’re not _really_ all that serious about shutting this kind of crap down and rooting the scum out. The sense of a clear and present danger isn’t foremost in a pol’s head, not really. Then when the ultimate horror occurs they’re crying like a bunch of wounded virgins. It’d be humorous if they weren’t playing footsie with lives of my family.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
With Bush’s open borders policy, it seems apparent that if bin Laden or other terrorists wanted to attack us, they could at any time. 13,000 Latins enter illegally each day. An estimated 60,000 Arabs have entered through Mexico.
The only explanation I can think of is that bin Laden doesn’t want to attack us. Trying to see it from his point of view, the unanticipated collapse of the twin towers of the WTC was a PR coup, but resulted in the Crusaders taking over two Moslem countries–a terrible loss for Islam. Why repeat that mistake, especially since he is on his way to bankrupting the U.S. by merely saying ‘boo’ now and then? Every time he says ‘boo,’ Bush and Cheney brown their pants and call for spending another trillion dollars.
I thought they were freedom fighters?
Anyway, no, it will help, but more must be done. As in taking the fight to the terrorists backyard in the Land of Mohammed.