Here's A Weird One For You

M

Michael H. Standart

Member
A drug running sub. From MSNBC.com.
quote:

Submarine with cocaine seized off Costa Rica
Makeshift vessel carrying 3 tons of drugs en route from Colombia to U.S.

MSNBC News Services
Updated: 6:59 p.m. ET Nov 20, 2006
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica - Tipped off by three plastic pipes mysteriously skimming the ocean’s surface, authorities seized a homemade submarine packed with 3 tons of cocaine off Costa Rica’s Pacific coast.

Four men traveled inside the 50-foot wood and fiberglass craft, breathing through the pipes. The craft sailed along at about 7 mph, just six feet beneath the surface, Security Minister Fernando Berrocal said Sunday.

The submarine was spotted Friday 103 miles off the coast near Cabo Blanco National Park on the Nicoya peninsula.
Click to expand...
For the rest of the story, go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15811689/

Comment: This isn't even the first time it's been done either.
 
Here's a little perspective: at $100 per gram, three metric tons of white powder would retail for $300,000,000. Three hundred million dollars. (The price comes from Google, not my own neighborhood, thank God.) With that kind of money at stake, it's no wonder there have been several of these homemade subs picked up. We will never know how many of them get through, and how many sink without a trace.
 
These guys will try anything.

The Australian government is to acquire small robot submarines equipped with cameras for the detection of containers of drugs attached to the hulls of ships. One or two have been found by divers recently.
 
>>These guys will try anything. <<

Smugglers are a pretty imaginative lot and always have been. Sometimes, they're not even very subtle, such as bootleggers who ran illegal liquor into the U.S. during Prohibition. There were a few who went to sea with the crew armed to the teeth and that made for a rather nasty surprise for small Coast Gaurd vessels which got into firefights with them.

Not that the bootleggers actively sought out such encounters. Far from it. Smugglers work best by not drawing attention to themselves. It's one thing to be able to beat off a small patrol craft with armament little better then a small mounted machine gun or two, quite another to deal with a vessel the size of a warship and with the same weapons. Last time I looked, nobody had been able to figure out a way to outrun a 76 mm or a five inch shell and they're not about to try.

A small craft like one of these submersibles is going to be the devils own work to detect...especially at night...unless you happen to be looking right at it and the drug runners know it. Even with the method known, it's going to be very difficult to develop a countermeasure for them. By the time anyone figures out something that's going to work, the smugglers will have already come up with something new.
 
They're still trying it. From ABC News:

Feds Nab Suspected Cocaine Smugglers in Pacific
quote:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Wednesday that it stopped a vessel allegedly smuggling an estimated five metric tons of cocaine, worth an estimated $353 million.

Authorities arrested four suspected smugglers Monday, but not before they apparently intentionally sank the semi-submersible vessel. A Coast Guard detachment made the arrests and recovered 11 bales containing 1,210 pounds of cocaine.
Click to expand...
Go to http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3512231&page=1 for the rest.
 
From Pravda:

Colombia detains two homemade submarines ready to ship drugs
quote:

Colombian marines discovered two homemade submarines that were to ship drugs from the country's Pacific Coast.

The two submarines, made of fiberglass, were found in a clandestine shipyard in the swamps around Colombia's largest port, Buenaventura, the navy said in a statement.
Click to expand...
Story at http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/31-10-2007/99954-submarines_drugs-0

Comment: No, that photo they used was most definately not one of the home made subs. While this story has a certain ring of truth, the same can't be said of everything these people put in print. If you don't believe me, take a gander at http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/31-10-2007/99895-moon-0
 
>>Where's your spirit of adventure?<<

Right here by my computer. Safer and saner that way.

Sometimes.
wink.gif
 
I don't know if that would help much. These little tubs are small, cheap (Read that to mean "expendable") and very hard to detect. That's why the drug runners are using them even though this trick is known to the authorities.
 
From Eircom.net:

Smugglers go beneath the waves to ship drug cargoes
quote:

COLOMBIA: Traffickers are building high-powered submersibles in jungle shipyards to move tonnes of cocaine, writes Juan Forero in Bahia Malaga, Colombia

In the annals of the drug trade, traffickers have swallowed cocaine pellets, dissolved the powder into ceramics and flown the drug as far as Africa on flimsy aircraft - anything to elude detection and get a lucrative product to market. Now, the cartels seem to be increasingly going beneath the waves, relying on submarines built in clandestine jungle shipyards to move tonnes of cocaine.
Click to expand...
Full story at http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/12162356?view=Eircomnet&cat=Top%20Stories

Comment: If the information in the article is correct, these are surprisingly sophisticated craft.
 

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