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Coast Guard cutter stops cocaine-laden submarine — Geez. Who knew about “narco subs?”
The crew of the Seattle-based U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Midgett, and a Navy maritime patrol aircraft, teamed up Wednesday to catch a drug-running submarine carrying seven tons of cocaine worth about $196 million, Coast Guard officials said Friday.
The 60-foot sub, a semi-submersible vessel, was interdicted by the Midgett about 400 miles south of the Mexico-Guatemalan border after the Navy air crew detected it and guided the cutter to it.
A Midgett armed boarding party quickly climbed aboard the sub and found 195 bales of cocaine in a large forward compartment, authorities said.
As the bales were being transferred, the submersible became unstable and started to sink. Unsafe to tow, the Midgett’s crew sank the vessel, considering it a potential hazard to navigation.
It was the second discovery of a drug-sub, called simply an “SPSS” for “self-propelled semi-submersible” vessel, in two days. The vessels, which are considered “stateless” because they are unflagged, are capable of traveling the distance from Ecuador to San Diego without replenishment, the Coast Guard said.
The first sub was captured last Sunday by the USS McInerney’s crew about 350 miles of the coast of Guatemala with four suspected Colombian drug runners and seven tons of cocaine, a Naval Forces Southern Command statement said.
The smugglers had tried to throw the boarding team into the sea by quickly reversing engines. But acting swiftly, the team thwarted an attempt to scuttle the vessel when it “compelled the smugglers to comply” with orders to close scuttling valves, a Coast Guard news release said. The McInerney took the sub in tow.
The drug subs, also known as narco-subs, are homemade and between 25-65 feet long. They are capable of carrying three to five tons of cocaine, and are designed solely for the secret smuggling of illegal drugs, Navy officials said.
By “self-propelled” do they have a guy on a bicycle inside or what?
#40 – O’Furniture
>>You’re babbling again. What does prohibition
>>have to do with at will employment?
Although I’ll be the first to admit that I often don’t know wtf Bobbo is talking about, in this case it was clear as mountain spring water.
By decriminalizing drugs, you put them in the same category as alcoholic beverages. Regulated, taxed, available to adults.
Sure, there will be some people who can’t handle it (like winos and junkies and meth heads), and who turn to a life of crime (or panhandling) to support their habit.
But criminalizing alcohol during Prohibition led to the heyday of Al Capone; criminalizing drugs in the “War On Drugs”has led to drug cartels, control by organized crime, murder, and mayhem.
GRtak The cartels make more than many countries because the drugs are illegal. I am surprised they haven’t bought a WWII era sub or few with torpedos.
Now that you mention it, I wonder how hard it’d be have self-guided torpedoes launched from Central or South America to land on the American west coast…
Let’s address demand, not supply. Why else would people sit inside a creaky floating water tank full of drugs unless there’s plenty of waiting consumers in the USA.