A HIGH-TECH GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK

Military Ships Patrol For Possible Drug Runners

ABOARD THE USS BOONE - There is another front in the war on drugs, fought
hundreds of miles from American soil.

The U.S. military, including ships from Mayport Naval Station, plays
high-tech hide-and-seek with hundreds of ships that try to smuggle cocaine
and marijuana through international waters to major American ports.

''This affects our everyday lives,'' said Cmdr. David Costa, commanding
officer of the Mayport-based USS Boone, which returned this month from four
months of counter-drug operations in the Caribbean. ''Anything we stop or
seize is headed for our homes and our families.''

The American counter-drug presence on the high seas is operated by both the
Coast Guard and the Joint Interagency Task Force, an amalgam of government
entities such as the Navy, Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Agency and Customs
Service.

Military forces were not engaged in counter-drug operations before the late
1980s because of laws prohibiting them from being involved in domestic law
enforcement. Operations were handled in different ways by the DEA, Coast
Guard and Customs Service.

Congress changed that in 1989, designating the Department of Defense as the
''lead agency for the detection and monitoring of aerial and maritime
trafficking.''

The joint task force was formed in 1994 to coordinate resources among the
agencies. It manages high-traffic areas, such as shipping lanes in the
Caribbean.

The task force supervises every step before a suspect ship is boarded, from
intelligence-gathering to ship deployment. When patrols prepare to board a
suspect ship, control of the mission shifts to the Coast Guard, which makes
the final decision on which vessels to board and the rules of engagement
for each boarding.

Those boardings are the heart of the arrest-and-seizure part of
counter-drug operations. It begins when a ship like the USS Boone, a
guided-missile frigate, uses a variety of resources to scour its patrol
area for possible drug runners. In addition to ship-based sonar and radar,
ships often have air reconnaissance from a SH-60B Seahawk helicopter or P-3
Orion surveillance aircraft.

Though the search tactics are similar to those in traditional naval
operations, the prey is much smaller and harder to find than an opposing
warship. Called ''go-fasts'' by the sailors, the targets are often small
speedboats with outboard motors. They are frequently no longer than 40 feet
- - less than a tenth the size of Boone.

When a helicopter locates a target, its orders depend on the situation.
Usually, its task is to make it possible for the Navy ship to intercept the
speedboat. At times, pilots said, that means flying low enough and close
enough to scare their prey motionless - sometimes close enough to read the
boat's name and the crew's faces.

''First, we let them see us and see what that does,'' said Lt. Neil
Brennan, a helicopter pilot with the HSL-48 Vipers detachment that cruised
on the Boone this summer. ''If all else fails, we just start circling over
his head.''

When the ship arrives, crew members ask a standard set of questions about
the suspect ship, its cargo, its home and its destination, which are called
''Right of Approach'' questions. At that stage, diplomacy is the key,
sailors said.

''It's just like a police officer dealing with someone they've pulled
over,'' said Lt. j.g. Daniel Ward, a member of the Coast Guard detachment
that sailed with the Boone. ''We don't start out by knocking down doors.''

Members of the boarding party speak different languages - especially
Spanish - and are specially trained to deal with the touchy diplomacy of
boarding a ship.

''We are not usually dealing with 'the enemy,' '' said Cmdr. Mark Baulch,
captain of the USS Robert G. Bradley, which relieved the Boone on
counterdrug operations last month. In other military operations, ''the
enemy is well-defined, but in this situation it's not as much.''

In most cases, the encounter ends with those questions. Boone crew members
questioned 40 ships during their deployment and boarded only a dozen.

''Most of the ships are very friendly,'' Costa said.

The Coast Guard must approve each step, moving from questioning to boarding
to searching to seizing cargo. During its four-month deployment, the Boone
made only a single seizure, netting more than 260 pounds of cocaine. The
powder was packed into colored wrappings, dotted with code numbers
indicating their destination and cartoon drawings identifying the factory
where the drug was processed, Costa said.

The law enforcement detachment from the Coast Guard, the only people on the
ship with arrest-and-seizure powers, found the drugs on a Panamanian ship,
buried in wells of powdered cement.

''We sifted some and it came out gray, gray, gray,'' Costa said. ''Then we
hit white.''

The Coast Guard detachment searched the ship, called the Caribe Star, for
more than 36 hours, finding cocaine buried up to 4 feet deep in cement. The
drugs were bound for the American coast.

''That makes it a little more relevant to home,'' Costa said.

A seizure that size makes up only a tiny portion of what the Navy
intercepts annually. In 1998, Navy ships seized 73 tons of cocaine - more
than $1 billion worth, according to Lt. Danny Hernandez, public affairs
officer for the Navy's Western Hemisphere Group.

They also netted more than $50 million in marijuana, arrested 131 people,
and seized 32 vessels and four aircraft. On average, nearly six Navy ships
a day were engaged in anti-drug operations.

And because drug producers know the stakes are high, their tactics have
become highly evolved, forcing the Navy to constantly adjust their own
methods. The opposition is a civilian one, but is also equipped and trained
to manage the lucrative cargo they risk on each shipment.

''They're civilian, but I'm not walking up and shaking hands with this
enemy,'' Costa said. ''They are a conglomerate with the latest technology
and the latest boats.''

Costa said counter-drug operations are also excellent for training sailors.
Although the task force provides specific instructions for where the Boone
should be and how to behave, there is much leeway for enterprising officers
to try new methods of searching for and tracking targets. Because of the
size and configuration of the speedboats they target, ships like the Boone
can often use their anti-submarine tactics against the tiny boats, as well.

The pace of the mission varies widely based on everything from the weather
to the quality and quantity of intelligence provided by the task force.

''Sometimes I'll fly three hours and only see one guy,'' said Lt. j.g.
Brian Applegate, another pilot from the Boone's helicopter detachment.
''Sometimes there's so many you can't even go after them all.''

And though the Boone had only a single seizure during a four-month mission,
statistics cannot quantify the other important goal of counter-drug
operations: deterrence.

''The other guy knows we're out here and we're not making it easy for
him,'' Costa said. ''We're the picket line that he has to get through.''