Explain cocaine subs to me

[henrybowman]

Ummm its a two fold answer, first is the towed submersable that is cut loose when the game is afoot, and it has a timed release buoy for recovery. And rumor has it that some drug dealers are using surplus RU subs with prearanged buy points.

Why dont they just have the drug subs travel under a large cargo ship? I mean would there be any way to detect them?

I am writing a book on the subject, any info would be helpful...

Probably not.

Typically, customs inspectors look at the containers that are coming off the ships, not subs under ships.

It's probably easier to put your stuff on a boat, drop a dinghy, and row it ashore without bothering to clear customs.

What about swimming up river in to the heart of the country? They would never see it coming...why am I so good at thinking at this kind of stuff..

[henrybowman]

Ummm its a two fold answer, first is the towed submersable that is cut loose when the game is afoot, and it has a timed release buoy for recovery. And rumor has it that some drug dealers are using surplus RU subs with prearanged buy points.

Why dont they just have the drug subs travel under a large cargo ship? I mean would there be any way to detect them?

I am writing a book on the subject, any info would be helpful...

Which various militaries have done so before (sneaking out of in under large surface vessels), including the US, UK, German, and other submarine forces. It's a time-honored tactic and difficult to guard against. It's quite easy to be disguised by a much larger and nosier surface ship when you're a much smaller and quieter submarine. It's something many ports try to guard against, but in which few succeed in catching those spying in their waters, unless you also use submarine nets, active ping devices on a regular basis, etc., etc.

Take a look at just how big even the Japanese two-man submarines were during WWII, and consider just how much drugs they could be carrying instead of their torpedoes. Even so, they were still quite large in size, with relative little capability. Granted, MANY things have gotten smaller, more accurate, computers more powerful, etc., etc. Even so, anyone fielding a submarine in today's world, and not wanting to spend MILLIONS on it, would still be pretty limited in range, depth, and capacity, and they would still have to face potential ASW forces looking for foreign intrusions. An unidentified submarine coming into US waters might be perceived as a National Security threat and once no response was received, simply taken out, questions asked later.

Is just owing one legal? what kind of hoops does one have to jump thru? is it less then a NFA full auto AR15?

[Erik]

It's probably easier to put your stuff on a boat, drop a dinghy, and row it ashore without bothering to clear customs.

It's even easier to have a east Texas/Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama shrimper meet your cargo ship at 150-200 miles out, and offload to the shrimp boat.

Or just dump it on the bottom in watertight containers, note the GPS position and have a boat from the other side pick it up later. Then they wont even have to meet, which may otherwise be spotted on radar or from a plane.

People that catch crawfish illegally here use that method, they put the float to the traps about a feet under water and use GPS to relocate them.

[mekender]

It's probably easier to put your stuff on a boat, drop a dinghy, and row it ashore without bothering to clear customs.

It's even easier to have a east Texas/Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama shrimper meet your cargo ship at 150-200 miles out, and offload to the shrimp boat.

Or just dump it on the bottom in watertight containers, note the GPS position and have a boat from the other side pick it up later. Then they wont even have to meet, which may otherwise be spotted on radar or from a plane.

People that catch crawfish illegally here use that method, they put the float to the traps about a feet under water and use GPS to relocate them.

Happens all the time on the FL coast... What happens often though is that a plane will fly in and dump the stuff right at the 3 mile line...

[MiddleAgedKen]

What about swimming up river in to the heart of the country? They would never see it coming...why am I so good at thinking at this kind of stuff..

Even large navigable rivers probably have all sorts of interesting things (snags, cars, wrecks, stray Deep Ones) outside the shipping channel. In a submerged coke sub, unless one were the High God King of dead reckoning navigation (no scope up for more than a second or two at a time assuming it even has a scope, no active sonar, and no looking out the big windshield of the Seaview -- river water is some murky s**t, there's a reason the Mississippi is called the Big Muddy), going up most rivers blind would have to be a pretty bloodcurdling experience.

Given the amount of money riding on it, though, some maniac will undoubtedly try it...assuming they haven't already.

[mekender]

What about swimming up river in to the heart of the country? They would never see it coming...why am I so good at thinking at this kind of stuff..

Even large navigable rivers probably have all sorts of interesting things (snags, cars, wrecks, stray Deep Ones) outside the shipping channel. In a submerged coke sub, unless one were the High God King of dead reckoning navigation (no scope up for more than a second or two at a time assuming it even has a scope, no active sonar, and no looking out the big windshield of the Seaview -- river water is some murky s**t, there's a reason the Mississippi is called the Big Muddy), going up most rivers blind would have to be a pretty bloodcurdling experience.

Given the amount of money riding on it, though, some maniac will undoubtedly try it...assuming they haven't already.

From the first hand accounts of one of the guys that helped find the CSS Appomattox, I dont doubt it... He was basically blind the whole time he was under the water... Visibility was below a foot.

[henrybowman]

Any reason why they would have to be manned? why not just auto pilot/RC it?

Or the same thing with planes, have some kind of a outer compartments of the skin/behind the tail, have them break free, and have them para gild to the LZ.

is it weird I think them much about it?

[arctictom]

The mission parameters of a smuggler is vastly different than a tactical military operation with targets and specific objectives , secondary targets etc etc .
In other words one is trying to hide and never be discovered and if discovered abandon their cargo and the other is going to be noticed and will do much to complete their mission even if found out.

[Aesop]

Some of y'all are taking the word "submarine" far too literally.

While there may be all kinds, most of them are like the Disney "subs": water-resistant semi-submersible boats, 50-100' with everything but the conning tower under water, decks awash with barely a foot of freeboard when loaded, and powered by full-on marine diesels with a huge fuel load and 3000 mi. range. They're painted dark to blue or green, frequently have bed-liner or other home-made anechoic surface coating, and usually have a small crew, 3-4 guys, carrying a ton or ten of coke, with just the nav/obs windows and a diesel tailpipe snorkel above water, no ability to ascend/descend, and they're made of fiberglass. No sonar, no radar, seldom GPS, usually just a marine radio and a compass.

To any sonar op they'd likely sound like a small to medium fishing boat, the radar return and heat signature are minimal, visibility tough unless you're sitting close by right on top of it, and they mainly stock up on drinking water because inside temps run >160F, reportedly, based on basic tests of seized/recovered vessels.

The loss rate is thought to be high, and as noted, the return on one run more than pays for the sub many times over, so they're considered disposable by the cartels. At the first sign of apprehension, they ditch and bail into a liferaft while the evidence goes down at sea.

They run them on the Pacific coast as well as the Gulf, and have been recovered both near-shore and far out to sea.

Nat Geo YouTube link

[Jericho941]

Any reason why they would have to be manned? why not just auto pilot/RC it?

Well, people dumb enough to do this are relatively inexpensive. The system works, why mess with it? Autopilots can't react to much of anything and suck at navigating, so the failure rate would likely increase quite a bit. Controlling it remotely means transmitting a signal strong enough to cross long distances and, depending on how sophisticated you want to be, handle quite a bit of bandwidth. That'll lead back to the operators easily.

Or the same thing with planes, have some kind of a outer compartments of the skin/behind the tail, have them break free, and have them para gild to the LZ.

With a drug plane, if you're being watched, dropping anything is a dead giveaway. If you aren't being watched, you're probably good to just land and offload somewhere. Gliding just increases the odds that your shipment goes somewhere you won't like.

is it weird I think them much about it?

Pfft, nah. Hell, when I was in high school my friends and I were disappointed we couldn't play the OPFOR in school shooting exercises, when the police and sheriff's department did their annual show of security theater. We were convinced we could ruin the whole thing enough so that the cops might actually learn something from the exercise and maybe piss off with the stupid lockdown drills. The fact that the bad guys were always played by brand new deputies, one of which would surrender after "taking a class hostage" merely proved to us that they had no interest in doing anything but playing dress-up in tacticool gear.

God, the stupid warnings they gave before every drill. "Get to the classroom, don't get caught outside or you might get your nose broken on the floor!" Why? Afraid someone'll bust out the deadly finger guns, scream "You'll never take me alive, pigs! BANG BANG BANG!" and screw up their power fantasy? :p