To Smuggle More Drugs, Traffickers Go Under the Sea

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/world/americas/drug-smugglers-pose-underwater-challenge-in-caribbean.html?_r=1&hp

by mhb • 14 years ago

39 41 14 years ago

nytimes.com

Beltiras• 14 years ago

Nixon's War on Drugs is lost. It's time to offer terms.

gghootch• 14 years ago

In case you'd like to look at some pretty pictures of these submarines, I recommend this quality Wired article:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/ff_drugsub/all/

ljf• 14 years ago

Vice magazine also made a really good documentary about narcosubs: http://www.vice.com/motherboard/colombian-narcosubs - only 30 mins long and worth a watch.

LaRakel• 14 years ago

>More troubling for American officials is their belief that these vessels could be used by terrorists to transport attackers or weapons, though they emphasize that no use of submersibles by militants has been detected.

When in doubt, terrorists.

fredBuddemeyer• 14 years ago

by fighting the war on drugs these traitors are advancing terrorism! by countering terrorsim these scoundrels divert precious resources from the the nation's war on drugs!

whats needed is another agency to resolve this conflict.

SoftwareMaven3• 14 years ago

More troubling for American officials is their belief that these vessels could be used by terrorists to transport attackers or weapons

One more reason to legalize and regulate drugs. The independent contractors making these subs would fold without their primary clients: the drug cartels. No more money for R&D.

jrockway• 14 years ago

I doubt anyone intends to transport attackers or weapons in this manner. The 9/11 hijackers had valid visas and Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh were Americans. They didn't need a submarine to bring bombs or terrorists to the US. They are already here.

The line in the article is just a way to spread fear, justifying the outlay of millions of dollars to patrol for drug boats. Nobody is scared of drugs anymore, so I imagine funding is harder to come by. Terrorism, though, is still scary apparently. (Look at the TSA. The thought of what incompetent government agency will be created after the next attack is frightening.)

SoftwareMaven3• 14 years ago

I agree with you. My point still stands, though. If we are concerned about terrorists having access to this, shut off its R&D money and gain other societal benefits (I say as a non-drug user).

Of course, why choose a method that would reduce the police state and its associated costs when we can choose one that will increase them. :(

apendleton• 14 years ago

Yes, that was my sense, as well: firstly, the terrorist fear tactics are ridiculous, but secondly, if terrorists ever were to use these things to smuggle weapons into the US, our drug policy would be at least partly to blame: drug producers and distributors are the best-funded organizations in global organized crime, they're probably the only ones well-enough-funded to develop this kind of technology, and they owe their wealth to demand induced by America's idiotic war on drugs. Now, though, it's too late -- the technology is out there for anyone to buy.

bluedanieru2• 14 years ago

Well, not really too late, since the technology has been around for ages. Legalizing drugs and dismantling the cartels would go a long way toward removing the infrastructure that's been built up to support this kind of project.

mijail2• 14 years ago

This was on HN a few weeks ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508 What's the obsession with cartel technology?

tomjen32• 14 years ago

What you don't want to build submarines and be paid in hookers and cash?

mijail2• 14 years ago

Touché

praptak• 14 years ago

Smart tech beats stupid government. It's a hacker's delight.

enko2• 14 years ago

My idea for when I became an evil criminal mastermind was always to use a kind of computer controller drogue which would attach to the bottom of cargo ships:

- construct a buoyancy-controllable drogue which would magnetically attach to a cargo ship, then hang behind and below it during transit

- load up the pseudoephedrine, or whatever, in (say) shanghai or during a stop somewhere near a supplier

- wait until the ship came near the US, then release the drogue offshore and pick it up with a boat

Seems almost foolproof, although I'd imagine marine capable technology is harder than my web developer's brain is envisaging, and you'd be betting lots of money that your little parasite didn't fall off.

I'm probably overthinking this, however, and you'd just pay someone onboard to keep some suitcases in their cabin, or something.

tomjen32• 14 years ago

You are missing the fuel -- it takes a lot of fuel to drag that parasite across the ocean and it would almost certainly be noticed by the crew of the ship as shipping is a low margin, high volume business and costs are closely watched.

jpdus• 14 years ago

If that parasite is designed slightly aerodynamic (with a total volume of lets say 5-10 tons) and you have a vessel with 100k+ GT, i dont think that the difference in fuel costs will be noticable - the difference due to tide/winds etc. will be much bigger.

bluedanieru2• 14 years ago

Powering an electromagnetic for that kind of voyage on an amateur drug-smuggler's budget is one possible pain point I can think of. It would have to be a pretty strong magnet, as well.

enko2• 14 years ago

It wouldn't be an electromagnet. It would be some strong permanent magnets with an attachment/detachment mechanism, like an inflatable interstitial bladder or spacer jacks. The key would be to let the magnet connect and disconnect slowly, controllably and quietly. It's quite doable, AFAIK (not a magnetic limpet engineer!).

As for power, why not a turbine powered generator? The host ship won't miss the few tens of watts extra drag.

beersigns• 14 years ago

There's a novel I read years ago that had a similar idea. It was a Clive Cussler book: The Mediterranean Caper. The smuggling plot had a modified submarine containing the narcotics attached to cargo vessels & it would detach from the cargo vessel at inspection times. It wasn't a great book and it felt kind of James Bond villain-esque but the concept is sound.

powertower• 14 years ago

http://battlefieldamerica.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/ice-dive-...

dlikhten• 14 years ago

You miss the point. The poor SOB ship won't even know it. It would be a submarine that attaches itself in Japan to a ship known to head to the US. Or mid-rout. And that's that. In the US, we have a small ship waiting for the cargo sending a signal to wake it up and detach.

The beauty of current AI is that the compartment can be set to notice divers nearby and "walk" to the other side of the hull. Since sonar can't pick up small attached objects, boom you got yourself the equivalent of a smuggling bed bug. The crew can be all detained while this happens because they are not in on it.

The only issue would be noise made if you have listener crews. That one would be tough to solve. That's why you attach yourself to large boats, not to small smuggle ships.

stevvooe• 14 years ago

The platform you seek is the seaglider [1]. It is highly efficient and doesn't come with the risk of operating in well known shipping lanes.

[1] http://www.apl.washington.edu/projects/seaglider/summary.htm...

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Probably not a bad idea, although you might be even more successful if your attachment unit just spot welded itself to the ship. (of course that leaves traces but it requires no energy to keep attached).

The sea gliders are interesting (see Liquid Robotics) but they have limited cargo capacity. 15,000 lbs would be like 5,000 sea gliders, that is a big foot print.

The game will of course really change when the human operators step out. Most drug cartels seem unwilling to risk their load to robotic pilots but at some point that will change. In a submersible you could gain a tremendous advantage if you didn't care how 'deep' you went relative to the Coast Guard.

Once we get electro-stimulus drugs this will become moot of course but in the mean time it makes for some interesting engineering challenges.

Kilimanjaro• 14 years ago

Nop, it will always go by air, cheaper, faster, anywhere.

Learjet is the preferred brand. A ton to your doorstep. Delivered with class.

niels_olson• 14 years ago

Before going to med school I was a Navy officer and my first deployment was counter-drug ops. We got a tour of the Columbian collection of recovered smuggling vehicles. This is definitely more advanced than anything I saw or heard about. I'm not sure our VBSS teams (1) would even be able to board such a vessel, assuming ROTHR (2, 3) ever found it, which I can't imagine it would.

I also did some in-class papers on subs in college. This strikes me as more advanced in many ways than John Holland's original designs.(4)

---

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visit,_board,_search,_and_seizu...

(2) http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/an-tps-71.htm

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar

(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Holland_(SS-1)

berito• 14 years ago

Working on this kind of hack sounds much more compelling than coding for an overhyped Internet startup.

To my mind, solving an impossible sounding challenge is larger than ethics.

MartinCron2• 14 years ago

There are plenty of impossible-sounding challenges that don't require ethical breaches. May I suggest that you try to find one of those?

mindcrime3• 14 years ago

What's the ethical breach in using technology to route around bad laws?

noonespecial• 14 years ago

Its only unethical if your country happens to be on the "war on drugs" bandwagon. People smuggle bibles into North Korea with great ingenuity. It's only unethical if you happen to be North Korean. Otherwise it's missionary work.

mc32• 14 years ago

Well, you could choose to work on the other side of it: discovery (detection) to allow interdiction. It's probably not an easy challenge, but it'd be legal and have quite a budget behind it, if you did find a viable (economical) solution.

pseingatl• 14 years ago

I wonder if an enterprising naval architect somehow obtained the plans for a US or German WWI or WWII sub. The diesel/battery technology is the same, and without weapons systems, using today's technology for nav, etc. the task is really only one of hull fabrication.

To Smuggle More Drugs, Traffickers Go Under the Sea

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