Narco Subs – A Conventional Threat?
Share by EmailEvery time you see a news report on the latest narco submarine to be found it is larger and increasingly sophisticated. As the drug cartels play the measure-countermeasure game with US and South American anti drug forces their traditional means of bulk transhipment, the speedboat and light aircraft, would seem to being increasingly supplanted by the narco submarine.
The vast array of airborne and surface detection assets ranged against these small surface and airborne vehicles has meant that such modes of transhipment are hazardous to the profit and loss account. The first narco submarines were simply semi submersible boats, relatively unsophisticated but still effective.
In June last year a game changing submarine was discovered in the jungles of Ecuador, the difference being its ability to fully dive and operate for continuous periods underwater. Since then a number of other finds have been made with the latest, a 30m design being discovered only recently in Columbia. Col. Manuel Hurtado, chief of staff of Colombia’s Pacific Command, told The Associated Press he estimated it could hold eight tons of drugs. The sub in Colombia was found in a rural area of Cauca province on the Timgiqui River about 275 miles (440 kilometers) southwest of Bogota.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLNI1F68Lhs
Hurtado said intelligence reports and tips from informants led troops to the vessel. He said the sub was empty when soldiers found it and no one was arrested. The fiberglass boat has room for a crew of six, is powered by two diesel engines and has an air-conditioned interior. It was reported to be able to submerge up to 3 meters deep and is equipped with a five meter periscope. Colombia has seized at least 32 semi-submersible vessels designed to smuggle drugs over the last decade, including a dozen last year.
Commenting on the find DEA Andean Regional Director Jay Bergman said;
“The submarine’s nautical range, payload capacity, and quantum leap in stealth have raised the stakes for the counter-drug forces and the national security community alike”
A Houston Chronicle article about this new generation of illegal submarines raised the possibility of uses other than drug smuggling.
“The U.S. military is taking this threat very seriously and thinking through all the implications of this sort of platform,” said Laurence McCabe, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
The submarine could carry terrorists just as easily as drugs, he said.
“They have now entered into a world of fairly elite, specialized skill sets, which are much easier to track and identify,” McCabe said. “They are innovative people, and they are smart, but at some point you run into a technology wall and need to bring in special people.”
Without getting too alarmist is this a conventional threat to the UK and is the technology likely to proliferate?
Although these seem to be mainly operating in the Pacific rather than Caribbean is our recent decision to change from frigate to RFA on APT(N) premature. If we are to take forward drug interdiction seriously and our commitment to APT(N) would seem to indicate that even in reduced circumstances we do, this represents a threat that the Cold War Relic (TM) frigates would be ideal to counter. We could even send an anti submarine aircraft like the Nimrod.
Oh Bugger.
Category: Land, Sea and Air
About the Author (Author Profile)
Think Defence hopes to start sensible conversations about UK defence issues, no agenda or no campaign but there might be one or two posts on containers, bridges and mexeflotes!Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
About that “quantum leap in stealth”; it’s always astonishing. Aircraft were already able to spot snorkels with radar back in 1944.
Besides, a “quantum leap” is a really, really tiny action.
Cheers for the image heads up Sven
I am surprised no drug lord has stumped up for a kilo.
(can you see what i did there).
We should have sold them the Upholders, that would have buggered them….
Nimrod – pah TD, you’re gold-plating again. Nimrod wouldn’t be particularly well suited to this task, think about it :
MAD – not much good against fibreglass
Big torpedo load – not in the ROE
High speed for an MPA – these aren’t exactly Alfas, and in the Caribbean you’re looking in a relatively small area
Range – ditto
In fact warm shallow littoral waters with lots of biologicals and seismic activity is about as horrible an environment as you could get for sonar. So while a T23 would be useful, you’d probably be relying more on airborne radar and just sighting subs with Mk I eyeball, so you want a plane with good visibility. Ideally you’d then want to deploy some Marines/SBS against them. So you’re looking at either tipping an air-dropped speedboat from a Herc, or a flyingboat. Never mind a tarted-up Comet, this sounds a job for a Catalina!!!
Ahhh, Catalina’s…:)
On a more serious note, I read a TSSE Report about the requirements/vessels required for a “Phase Zero” task group which included stopping Narco-Subs. It was very helicopter/Rotor UAV dependent, mainly due to that mission. I shall see if I can send a link (the misses is on the computer at the moment) .
Personally I think some Blimps equipped like Merlin’s or small MPA’s would be more than sufficient.
Dear Admin – please, please correct me if I am wrong (bound to be…) but are you yourself not guilty of the “There is no Soviet Red Banner Fleet anymore…..” argument against ASW assets ?? Or did I imagine that back in a comment thread somewhere…..
Photos and video clip courtesy of Eagle1
http://www.eaglespeak.us/2011/02/colombia-grabs-big-drug-submarine.html
@Jed, I think I have used the no Red Banner Fleet argument before but I have also made the point that with the proliferation of modern AIP subs the RN needs to retain a core set of ASW skills and capabilities
You could always just legalise drugs and let GlaxoSmithKline/Pfizer show the drug gangs what a real war looks like….
Without getting too alarmist is this a conventional threat to the UK and is the technology likely to proliferate?
“Is the national security of the UK threatened by the news that there is now a new way for South American entrepreneurs to move recreational drugs into North America?” Hmm, I think I’m going to have to say “no” on that one. Remind me again why our national security is threatened by a 2% drop in the street price of cocaine in New York?
I was wondering if the technology might proliferate to other concerned less with profit
As promised a summary of that TSSE report; idea was to see if HA/DA and MSO requirements were compatable. In their veiw yes, but like a said lots of Helicopters/rotor UAV.
http://www.nps.edu/Academics/Institutes/Meyer/docs/SEA-15FinalPresentation%20slides.pdf
Worth looking at in regard to Forward Presence Squadrons as well…
For those who care, the full report:
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA502712&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
A
As TD says, today, its a not quite fully submersable moving drugs, in 10 years, a fully submersable moving nuclear weapons.
Thanks Gareth, will have a browse
As TD says, today, its a not quite fully submersable moving drugs, in 10 years, a fully submersable moving nuclear weapons.
The big missing moving part there for me is the nuclear weapon. The people who actually have them already have perfectly good submarines as well. The people who would be likely to be using home-made fibreglass minisubs don’t have any nuclear weapons.
And even if a terrorist group had a nuclear weapon and wanted to set it off in the UK, there are many easier ways to get it there than putting it on a fibreglass minisub. Some sort of boat might be a rather simpler option.
DomJ said: “You could always just legalise drugs and let GlaxoSmithKline/Pfizer show the drug gangs what a real war looks like…”
Yep, legalize it, tax it and refuse rehab on the NHS: “if you decided to do this, now you pay the price….” harsh I know.
By the way, a friend of mine is big expert on drug treatment programs in UK prison service, he says ‘hard’ drugs are absolutely nothing compared to alcoholism in its harmful effects on society in general, the economy and on individuals.
If you take that to an extreme conclusion, perhaps we should not be worried about coke carrying subs, but about imports of Caribbean Rum ! It’s a strange world for sure……
JED
As a criminal Lawyer I dread the day they legalise drugs – i will be out of business within weeks. There will be nasty outbreaks of lawabidingness everywhere.
But then I think they should just give it away to whoever wants it.
Commercialy heroin is cheap to make, if a drug addict just had to walk into boots and say give me 10 shots of free heroin, the cost to the taxpayer has been reconed at arround 2-3 billion year. Estimates of 4-5 billion would almost immediatly be saved from the policeing budget, with more to follow.
If you sell it people will still steal etc to buy it.
A
True, nuclear weapons are an extreme example, but military grade weapons are less so.
Remember the Mumbai Massacre.
True, you sneak the eople and weapons into the UK without a submersible, but its easier with.
all that’s needed is an aircraft that can fly long, low and slow with a diesel sniffer fitted. Although so troublesome in the fifties and sixties because of the limitations of the technology, a modern version would be much more accurate. Or, the low tech way: train a dog to associate diesel with treats and let him stick his head out the window – double doggy heaven!
True, nuclear weapons are an extreme example, but military grade weapons are less so.
Remember the Mumbai Massacre.
Yes, I do. They came in by boat.
True, you sneak the people and weapons into the UK without a submersible, but it’s easier with.
Because it’s so prohibitively difficult right now to sneak people and material into the UK?
And where are you going to launch this terrorist submersible from? Calais? Or are you going to try to sail it up from North Africa across the Bay of Biscay? Good luck with that…
A
“Yes, I do. They came in by boat.”
Yes they did, now they can come by submarine.
“Because it’s so prohibitively difficult right now to sneak people and material into the UK?”
At the moment no, but if we did attempt to secure our borders, this makes it rather more difficult.
“And where are you going to launch this terrorist submersible from? Calais? Or are you going to try to sail it up from North Africa across the Bay of Biscay? Good luck with that…”
Tow it behind another vessel.
Launch it from Turkey or Egypt or Gaza to Cyprus.
Hell, why not launch from Calais, Rainbow Warrior anyone?
We dont have to poop our pants and scream “oh noes we is all goings to die”, but its another tool we’d be better off not being readily available.
OK, here’s another one. Should we be worried about terrorists using LAPES-delivered armoured vehicles in a raid on a UK airport?
After all, the technology exists. It’s existed since the 1960s. Cargo aircraft are readily available. Second-hand armoured vehicles (without armament) are cheap; LAPES requires little more than big parachutes and pallets.
Overall, the threat seems to be a lot more credible than the X-Craft Jihadis slipping into the Thames in their tupperware T-boats, disembarking at St Katherine’s Dock (“excuse me, sir, do you have a mooring permit?”) and toddling up Aldgate to shoot up a few office buildings.
But no one’s worried about the prospect of a few repainted Saladins dropping out the back of an old Antonov onto runway 90 at Heathrow, and certainly no one’s saying we should have Javelin crews at every airport just in case. And the Sword of Islam Underwater Demolition Team is pretty much in the same category of ludicrousness.
I had similar thoughts when I read the piece in the news about the narc-sub, a quick internet search also highlighted the ‘narco-torpedo’. Although things that float are beyond my realm of expertise, the marrying of the narco sub technology and a simple high-explosive torpedo seems but a simple step away. Something for the shipping companies to think about rather than focus just on piracy. Also a sub or a boat releasing low tech sea-mines into the English Channel could potentially wreak havoc amongst the busiest sea lane in the world. MH-53E Dragon anybody?
@ a -” But no one’s worried about the prospect of a few repainted Saladins dropping out the back of an old Antonov onto runway 90 at Heathrow,”
Well I am now! Thanks a lot, I’m going to have nightmares for weeks…
On a more serious note; The Israelis have had problems with terrorist divers. They’ve been amateurish so far (please correct if wrong) but practice makes perfect… Scuba diving is a popular past time with countless “schools” just like flying. I’ve read some TSSE reports about floating IED’s/suicide boats and although essentially a “School project” it does show some thinking/worry about this prospect over the pond.
the marrying of the narco sub technology and a simple high-explosive torpedo seems but a simple step away
There’s nothing “simple” about a torpedo. As Padfield pointed out, it’s basically a submarine in miniature. They’re fantastically complicated pieces of equipment. In the First and Second World Wars, a simple contact-fused non-homing torpedo cost about £80-100k in today’s money.
Not to mention the size of them. To carry a warhead big enough to sink a modern ship, you need a big torpedo; that needs a big tube, and therefore a big submarine to launch it from. And you’ll need several tubes, because even if it isn’t zigzagging a ship is not an easy target to hit. They didn’t call the Submarine Commanders’ Course the Perisher because it was a doddle.
As promised some time ago, the report concerning M-IEDs etc and the percieved threat to US ports.
http://www.nps.edu/Academics/Institutes/Meyer/docs/SEA%2014%20FINAL.pdf