Columbian Drug Runners Building Kevlar-Covered Submarines
65 replies, posted
[URL]http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/ff_drugsub/[/URL]
[IMG]http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/19-04/ff_drugsub_f.jpg[/IMG]
[quote]
[B]The clatter of helicopter blades [/B]echoed across the jungles of northwestern Ecuador. Antinarcotics commandos in three choppers peered at the mangroves below, scanning for any sign of activity. The police had received a tip that a gang of Colombian drug smugglers had set up a clandestine work site here, in a dense swamp 5 miles south of Colombia’s border. And whatever the traffickers were building, the tipster had warned, was truly enormous.
For decades, Colombian drug runners have pursued their trade with diabolical ingenuity, staying a step ahead of authorities by coming up with one innovation after another. When false-paneled pickups and tractor-trailers began drawing suspicion at US checkpoints, the cartels and their Mexican partners built air-conditioned tunnels under the border. When border agents started rounding up too many human mules, one group of Colombian smugglers surgically implanted heroin [URL="http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/01/66187"]into purebred puppies[/URL]. But the drug runners’ most persistently effective method has also been one of the crudest—semisubmersible vessels that cruise or are towed just below the ocean’s surface and can hold a ton or more of cocaine.
Assembled in secret shipyards along the Pacific coast, they’ve been dubbed drug subs by the press, but they’re incapable of diving or maneuvering like real submarines. In fact, they’re often just cigarette boats encased in wood and fiberglass that are scuttled after a single mission. Yet despite their limitations, these semisubmersibles are notoriously difficult to track. US and Colombian officials estimate that the cartels have used them to ship hundreds of tons of cocaine from Colombia over the past five years alone.
But several years ago, intelligence agencies began hearing that the cartels had made a technological breakthrough: They were constructing some kind of supersub in the jungle. According to the persistent rumors, the phantom vessel was an honest-to-goodness, fully functioning submarine with vastly improved range—nothing like the disposable water coffins the Colombians had been using since the ’90s. US law enforcement officials began to think of it as a sort of Loch Ness Monster, says one agent: “Never seen one before, never seized one before. But we knew it was out there.”
Finally, the Ecuadoreans had enough information to launch a full-fledged raid. On July 2, 2010, a search party—including those three police helicopters, an armada of Ecuadorean navy patrol boats, and 150 well-armed police and sailors—scoured the coastline near the Colombian border. When a patrol boat happened on some abandoned barrels in a clearing off the Río Molina, the posse moved in to find an [I]astillero[/I], or jungle shipyard, complete with spacious workshops, kitchens, and sleeping quarters for 40. The raid had clearly interrupted the workday—rice pots from breakfast were still on the stove.
And there was something else hastily abandoned in a narrow estuary: a 74-foot [URL="http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/index.php/2010/07/drug-subs-2-0/"]camouflaged submarine[/URL]—nearly twice as long as a city bus—with twin propellers and a 5-foot conning tower, beached on its side at low tide. “It was incredible to find a submarine like that,” says rear admiral Carlos Albuja, who oversees [URL="http://www.armada.mil.ec/"]Ecuadorean naval operations[/URL] along the northwest coast. “I’m not sure who built it, but they knew what they were doing.”
[/quote]Kevlar-coated diesel-electric submarines capable of smuggling a quarter of a billion dollars worth of cocaine, built by unskilled peasants in the Ecuadorian jungle. Say what you will about Colombian drug cartels, but you have to respect batshit insane ingenuity like that.
Pretty cool.
I'm imagining some evil mastermind sitting in a chair in the sub. Petting a cat, or just contemplating, or whatever evil masterminds do when waiting. Wait, no, he would be sitting on a giant pile of cocaine.
The sub would be piloted by normal guys in baseball hats and wife beaters and shit.
And then it would just come up at some beach in Texas or somewhere around there, and the evil mastermind would get out and just yell, "Hey, who wants some crack from the crack-sub!"
Just fucking give up DEA, they're winners and you'll never win.
next up
DEA gets its own sea king heli chopters
I still find it funny whenever I see a submarine that drug runners use.
This reminds me of a story I heard.
During prohabition there was supposedly a sub that smugglers used to transport alchohol.
Apprently it shot hollowed-out torpedos full of whiskey at the shore to be picked up by rumrunneres :v:
What have these guys been watching, James Bond movies?
[editline]30th March 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=alphatwo;28900120]This reminds me of a story I heard.
During prohabition there was supposedly a sub that smugglers used to transport alchohol.
Apprently it shot hollowed-out torpedos full of whiskey at the shore to be picked up by rumrunneres :v:[/QUOTE]
I don't think they did but the prohibition did give birth to the term 'bootlegging' if I'm not mistaken.
If you want to read something funny, go look up the term 'blind pig'.
[QUOTE=Sir Whoopsalot;28900140]What have these guys been watching, James Bond movies?
[editline]30th March 2011[/editline]
I don't think they did but the prohibition did give birth to the term 'bootlegging' if I'm not mistaken.
If you want to read something funny, go look up the term 'blind pig'.[/QUOTE]
[quote]The term "blind pig" (or "blind tiger") originated in the United States in the 19th century; it was applied to lower-class establishments that sold alcoholic beverages illegally. The operator of an establishment (such as a saloon or bar) would charge customers to see an attraction (such as an animal) and then serve a "complimentary" alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law.
"In desperate cases it has to betake itself to the exhibition of Greenland pigs and other curious animals, charging 25 cents for a sight of the pig and throwing in a gin cocktail gratuitously."
"[They] are in a mysterious place called a ‘blind tiger,’ drinking the very bad whiskey for which Prohibition is indirectly responsible."[/quote]
Huh, that was pretty damn clever.
(Quote shamelessly ripped from wikipedia)
[QUOTE=Kalibos;28899942]next up
DEA gets its own sea king heli chopters[/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/6111/seakinghelicopter.png[/IMG]
These?
I note they are making a big thing of this. Of course, making a song and dance of what they're up against will help them when they next ask for funding.
What the fuck, just sink the bastards and ruin their profits.
[QUOTE=TrouserDemon;28900565]I note they are making a big thing of this. Of course, making a song and dance of what they're up against will help them when they next ask for funding.[/QUOTE]
"We need $20 million for depth charges to sink the $5 million Colombian Navy U-boats."
Imagine if one of these drug cartels bought the Ark Royal, how much could they smuggle across the border with an aircraft carrier.
This has always blown my mind. I mean those Chechen Rebels are pretty ingenious and they have nothing on these subs.
I saw the National Geographic documentary about these things.
Fucking amazing how they make them
[QUOTE=Swilly;28900576]What the fuck, just sink the bastards and ruin their profits.[/QUOTE]
Actually, whenever one of these is caught by the US Coast Guard, they purposely sink the boat.
Not only does all the evidence go to the bottom of the ocean, but the Coast Guard is still legally required to save them.
With no physical evidence of their activities, they just get deported back to their country to get more drugs and a new boat, and try again.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;28899656]Kevlar-coated diesel-electric submarines capable of smuggling a quarter of a billion dollars worth of cocaine, built by unskilled peasants in the Ecuadorian jungle. Say what you will about Colombian drug cartels, but you have to respect batshit insane ingenuity like that.[/QUOTE]
Where are you getting $250,000,000 from? I'd value a ton of blow at $25m, but not $250m.
[QUOTE=PrismatexV8;28902602]Where are you getting $250,000,000 from? I'd value a ton of blow at $25m, but not $250m.[/QUOTE]
Charlie Sheen & Co. Of course!
Kevlar doesn't work when wet (Still reasonably strong, but substantially less so) and it degrades rapidly when directly exposed to UV radiation (Like that from the Sun).
Kevlar vests counter this by placing the kevlar inside water/light proof containers. They still degrade over time and eventually the light and moisture in the air will destroy vests. Seawater can ruin them MUCH faster.
So it either is going to have some trouble of its own accord, or the report is just wrong.
[QUOTE=Dacheet;28902630]Charlie Sheen & Co. Of course![/QUOTE]
Thanks for rating me dumb; I'm sure you, as a 14-year-old, have a lot of knowledge of street drug values.
[QUOTE=PrismatexV8;28902781]Thanks for rating me dumb; I'm sure you, as a 14-year-old, have a lot of knowledge of street drug values.[/QUOTE]
You were rated dumb because you didn't read the article, idiot. States clearly that the new sub has a 9-ton capacity valued at $250 million.
[QUOTE=Religous Nutjob;28900647]Imagine if one of these drug cartels bought the Ark Royal, how much could they smuggle across the border with an aircraft carrier.[/QUOTE]
It'd be hard to smuggle with something you could probably see from space with an average satellite.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;28902821]You were rated dumb because you didn't read the article, idiot. States clearly that the new sub has a 9-ton capacity valued at $250 million.[/QUOTE]
Where in the article did they say it has a 9-ton capacity?
[QUOTE=PrismatexV8;28902873]Where in the article did they say it has a 9-ton capacity?[/QUOTE]
In a caption in the full article.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;28902096]Actually, whenever one of these is caught by the US Coast Guard, they purposely sink the boat.
Not only does all the evidence go to the bottom of the ocean, but the Coast Guard is still legally required to save them.
With no physical evidence of their activities, they just get deported back to their country to get more drugs and a new boat, and try again.[/QUOTE]
There is no way to win! What the fuck!? You start a war and then you purposely set yourself up to lose!?
907,184 grams in a ton (short not metric, using the lowest possible value), about $100 a gram at street level.
9 tons=$816,465,600 at street level
So a quarter billion is not that high of an estimate for distribution prices.
[url]http://www.economist.com/node/9414607?story_id=9414607[/url]
When I first saw the title of this thread, I found it quite hard to believe.
How are they even able to get the submarines, let alone cover them in Kevlar?
[QUOTE=GunFox;28902761]Kevlar doesn't work when wet (Still reasonably strong, but substantially less so) and it degrades rapidly when directly exposed to UV radiation (Like that from the Sun).
Kevlar vests counter this by placing the kevlar inside water/light proof containers. They still degrade over time and eventually the light and moisture in the air will destroy vests. Seawater can ruin them MUCH faster.
So it either is going to have some trouble of its own accord, or the report is just wrong.[/QUOTE]
[quote]The hull, they discovered, was made from a costly and exotic mixture of Kevlar and carbon fiber[/quote]
*cough* read the full article *cough*
[QUOTE=RBM11;28903805]*cough* read the full article *cough*[/QUOTE]
I know, but Kevlar in hulls is extremely difficult to pull off. You need more than carbon fiber to keep it from being exposed to water and sunlight. Carbon fiber is generally used on boats in place of Kevlar. They serve similar purposes. Each reinforce the hull from the inside.
The hull itself still has to be made out of other materials.
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