KEY WEST, Fla. — For more than 24 hours last September, a Coast Guard helicopter and speedboat pursued drug traffickers and their contraband across the Caribbean Sea. Finally they caught up with the improbable vessel, the latest innovation in the decades-old drug war. It was a submarine.
The low-slung, diesel-propelled vessel, painted a darkshade to blend with the water, was believed to be carrying several tons of cocaine. But after the submersible’s crew scuttled the vessel and abandoned ship, the Coast Guard was able to salvage only two 66-pound bales of narcotics.
This is the new challenge faced by the United States andLatin American countries as narcoticsorganizations bankroll machine shops operating under cover of South America’s triple-canopy jungles to build diesel-poweredsubmarines that would be the envy of all but a few nations.
After years of detecting these craft in the less trafficked Pacific Ocean, officialshave seen a spike in their use in the Caribbean over the last year. American authorities have discovered at least three models of a new and sophisticated drug-trafficking submarine capable oftraveling completely underwater from South America to the coast of the United States.
The vessel involved in the September chase was an older model that was only semi-submersible. That model presents a silhouette above water barely larger than a kitchen table, but requires a snorkel to bring in airfor the diesel engine,which has a range of about 3,000 miles. The three newer, fully submersible vessels already captured were capable of hauling 10tons of cocaine and, by surfacing at night to charge their batteries off the onboard diesel engine, could sail beneath the surface all the way from Ecuador to Los Angeles.
With the use of thesecraft on the rise, American officials saythey fear that the trafficking networks are moving away from so-called fast boats, the high-powered fishingand leisure boats that can carry about a ton of cocaine and are easier to spot, to semi-submersible and fully submersiblevessels that can surreptitiously carry many more tons of drugs, which are unloaded in shallow waters or transported to shore by small boats.
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.
Drug networks historically were organized to combine the tasks of production, transportation and distribution, and they have seen little reason to cooperate with terrorists. But these new advanced submarines are built in some cases by independent contractors who may be more willing to sell the vessels to anybody offering the right price.
“These vessels are seaworthy enough that I have no doubt in my mind that if they had enough fuel, they could easilysail into a port in the United States,” said Cmdr. Mark J. Fedor of the Coast Guard, who commands the cutter Mohawk, the 200-foot vessel whose fast boat and helicopter interdictedthe submersible in the Caribbean last September .
In addition to the Coast Guard ships and aircraft patrolling the seas, the American effort includes a sophisticated command center thatcombines intelligence from across the United States government and from nations in the region, which areincreasingly cooperating to battlecocaine trafficking.
This growing American counternarcotics effort is part of a larger shift to new missions for the nation’s security and intelligence agencies after a decade spent focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That mission to sort and analyze intelligence on drug trafficking and then coordinate the response occurs around the clock behind the walls of an interagency task force in Key West, which sent the intelligence report toCommander Fedor’s ship and coordinatedits response.
The intelligence report, based on surveillance from a Coast Guard plane over the Caribbean and intelligence tidbits from nations in Latin America, saidthe submersible had left Colombia headedfor Honduras.
Although the craft was 300 miles away, the Mohawk was the closest American vessel to it. So Commander Fedor immediately ordered his 100 crew members to direct the ship off Hondurasto intercept the craft.
Cocaine-filled submarines and semi-submersible crafts “are the Super Bowl of counternarcotics,” Commander Fedor said. “When you hearone is moving, you say: ‘Wow. Game on.’”
After a day’s travel, the cutter got within a few miles of the craft and deployed the cutter’s fast boat and a helicopter.