Latin American drug smugglers are stepping up their use of small, hand-made mini-subs in order to dodge U.S. military patrols in the eastern Pacific. The Coast Guard detected just 23 mini-subs between 2001 and 2007. This number "ballooned" to some 60 subs so far this year, according to Coastie Commander Cameron Naron. He estimates that two or three subs make the trip from Colombia to the U.S. every week, each carrying as much as 10 tons of drugs.
"Once perceived as impractical and risky smuggling tools," mini-subs are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Naron says, with combined steel-and-fiberglass hulls and radio suites rivaling commercial vessels. The Coast Guard believes the vessels are manufactured in rebel-controlled Colombian jungles, but where the designs come from, Naron can't say. "If you had that information, we'd be very interested," he told participants of a Pentagon-sponsored teleconference this morning.
Mini-sub "interdiction is dangerous business," Naron says. On September 13, a Navy patrol plane detected a 15-foot drug sub off the coast of Guatemala and a Navy frigate launched a Coast Guard boarding team to investigate. The team climbed aboard the sub's flat hull and knocked on the hatch, at which point the "startled smugglers attempted throw our personnel into the sea by backing down the [sub's] engines quickly," Naron recalls. "This maneuver nearly threw our people" off the sub, into its propeller. "They had to cling to the exhaust pipe."
Naron says Navy patrol planes are the primary means of detecting the subs, but sometimes a Navy or Coast Guard ship "gets lucky" and stumbles upon one. To boost efforts to crack down on drug-sub use, Congress last night passed legislation making it illegal for anyone to operate a "stateless" mini-sub on an international voyage.
(Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol)
