MARITIME DRUG TRAFFICKING

How Changes in Technology Are Making It Harder to Nab the Bad Guys

In 2010, the U.S. Coast Guard seized just over 90 tons of cocaine
destined for U.S. shores, a haul valued at more than USD $3.5 billion.

However, in the multibillion-a-year U.S. cocaine industry, the Coast
Guard's interdiction rate accounts for only 26 per cent of the
estimated 350 tons of cocaine arriving in the U.S. each year; the
sale of which supports both criminal and terrorist groups in Latin
America and abroad.

The remaining supply, shipped from the Andean nations of Colombia,
Peru and Bolivia through an intricate trafficking network that spans
South, Central, and North America, is able to be delivered unhindered
as a result of the traffickers' efforts to continually seek out more
efficient and anonymous ways of transporting their product.

With large operating budgets, traffickers have proven their ability
to develop and adopt new techniques that allow them to elude
international maritime forces. However, while the evolution of their
technology is a hallmark of the cat-and-mouse game of maritime drug
trafficking, the discovery of a fully submersible submarine in a
clandestine jungle shipyard in Ecuador last July was deemed a game changer.

In the past

Over the last 30 years, seafaring cocaine traffickers, who transport
over 80 per cent of the cocaine arriving in the U.S., have made a
living of finding ways to elude authorities. In the late 1990s
"go-fast" boats began to replace airplanes as the main means for
moving cocaine through the Caribbean, the primary trans-shipment zone
of the day.

At the time, the favoured mode of transportation, the twin-engine
light plane, could only carry up to 700 kilograms of cocaine, while
go-fast boats provided an opportunity to move at least three times
that amount. In addition, the fiberglass watercraft was capable of
travelling up to 130 kilometres per hour and offered smugglers a
speed advantage over the authorities.

Furthermore, with a price tag of $25,000, the boats were cheaper to
acquire and operate than airplanes, and were considered to be a more
disposable platform, an important characteristic given the fact that
operators often scuttle their vessel after the shipment has been delivered.

However, the boats' large wakes made them easy to spot, and anti-drug
agents, using helicopters and their own high-speed vessels - such as
the Midnight Express speedboats that the U.S. supplied to the
Colombian Navy in 2005 - became far more adept at spotting and
intercepting the traffickers' vessels.

By the year 2000

By the turn of the century, Plan Colombia, the U.S. effort to fight
the illegal drug trade in the number one cocaine producing country,
was introduced, leading to a shift in trafficking routes from the
Caribbean to the lightly patrolled Pacific.

In addition to the geographic shift, less conspicuous vessels, such
as cargo ships and fishing vessels, became increasingly common means
of transporting cocaine. Fishing vessels, usually equipped with
sophisticated navigation and communication instruments, were popular
as they did not require the type of refit work that would give away
the vessel's role in smuggling operations, and allowed traffickers to
transit long distances without attracting suspicion from authorities.

At the time, traffickers also became increasingly skilled at
concealing their illicit cargo, hiding cocaine in compartments within
fuel or ballast tanks, making it nearly impossible to locate the
cache of drugs without emptying the fuel tanks - a move that violates
U.S. environmental laws - or dismantling the vessel in question.

Also, traffickers using non-commercial vessels, such as pleasure
yachts, opted to make their voyages during peak times, such as civic
holidays, allowing them to better blend in with legal maritime traffic.

In addition, the use of multiple at-sea transfers, decoy vessels and
logistics supply ships increased during the early 2000s, adding more
complexity to maritime trafficking routes and challenging interdiction forces.

In the last five years

However, new rules implemented in 2007 that required fishing boats
operating off of Colombia and Ecuador to carry GPS devices allowed
police to better track vessel movements, and helped curb the number
of commercial vessels being used by traffickers. Additionally, the
Container Control Program (CCP), a joint initiative by the UN Office
on Drugs and Crime and the World Customs Organization, that minimize
the risk of maritime containers being commandeered by traffickers
began to achieve measurable results: in the first three years since
CCP operations began at the port of Guayaquil, Ecuador, almost 25
tons of cocaine were seized.

The increased surveillance of commercial vessels is what authorities
believe led traffickers to change course yet again, this time heading
below the surface.

The arrival of semi-submersibles

In 2006, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter spotted the first semi-submersible
boat, nicknamed "Bigfoot", off the coast of Costa Rica. Powered by a
300-horsepower diesel motor and travelling 18 inches below the
surface at about 12 kilometres an hour, Bigfoot was a sign that
traffickers were opting for stealth over speed to evade authorities.

The 60-foot fiberglass vessels, painted in various shades of blue to
blend into the ocean, can travel undetected by the human eye or
surveillance systems for up to 2,000 nautical miles. The boat's tiny
wake creates a negligible radar footprint, and because the exhaust is
released through tubing below the surface and the boat has an upper
lead shielding to minimize its heat signature, patrol aircraft are
unable to rely on their heat-sensing equipment to locate the vessels.

Additionally, the boats, which are primarily built in jungle
shipyards along the estuaries of Colombia's Pacific coast for
approximately half a million dollars each, are capable of carrying up
to 10 tons of cocaine. This is a haul that garners a street value of
up to $550 million, more than 1,000 times the cost of the vessel,
making it a highly lucrative conveyance method.

As a result of their stealth and return on investment, authorities
believed that up to 70 percent of the 480 tons of cocaine leaving
Colombia's Pacific coast in 2008 was packed aboard semi-submersibles.

With the UN estimating an interdiction success rate of only 14
percent, Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) South, the Pentagon's
anti-narcotics command centre, compared the task of patrolling for
semi-submersibles to policing the entire United States with only
three squad cars.

Policy changes

In addition, authorities also faced legal challenges in stopping the
vessels as crews were able to avoid prosecution by simply scuttling
the craft and sinking the drugs if spotted. However, in October 2008,
a law passed by the U.S. Congress outlawing the use of
semi-submersibles in international waters unless registered with a
state, made it possible for authorities to convict a boat's crew on
the basis of visual evidence that they were manning the subs.

The following year, SOUTHCOM, the command responsible for all U.S.
military activity in South and Central America, reported a 46 percent
decrease in the detection rate of semi-submersibles transiting the
area, and the Colombian Navy only detected one semi-submersible in
2010, down drastically from 22 seizures in 2009.

The lower detection rate was seen by SOUTHCOM and other agencies as
an indication that traffickers were adapting yet again. However, it
wasn't until July 2010, when the first fully functional, completely
submersible "narco-sub" was discovered in an Ecuadorian jungle
shipyard, that authorities' suspicions were confirmed.

Fully submerged

A proper diesel-electric submarine like the one discovered in Ecuador
has the option of shutting down its engines and submerging fully to
run on batteries, at which time it becomes completely invisible on
radar and infrared. Such a capability means that interdiction forces
can then only locate the sub by using sonar, which has a shorter
range, is far less reliable, and requires the use of a greater number
of assets.

In many ways, the move towards fully submersible submarines was an
inevitable transition in the evolution of maritime drug trafficking
technology. The technology is not overly advanced but its advanced
covert qualities follow the trend of traffickers opting for stealth over speed.

Given that most Western navies still maintain significant
anti-submarine forces, drug traffickers may find themselves forced to
adapt their maritime strategy once again. While the Director of the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency for the Andean Region, Jay Bergman,
described the narco-sub as the "final frontier" for the maritime drug
smugglers, historical trends indicate nothing is impossible in the
multi-billion dollar cocaine trafficking industry.