Cannon used to launch Mexican marijuana into the United States

InsightCrime: Every day, Mexico‘s cartels attempt to ship untold quantities of drugs across the US border. And every day, Mexican and US authorities try to stop them. The drugs are usually hidden in commercial or passenger vehicles transiting official checkpoints. But in recent years, crime groups have begun to experiment with a wide range of innovative methods for moving illicit cargo past one of the world’s most heavily guarded borders and into the most lucrative drug market. Below, InSight Crime looks at five of the most creative.

Tunnels

The first “narco-tunnel” from Mexico to the US was discovered in 1990. According to the Los Angeles Times, the tunnel ran 273 feet from a luxury home in Agua Prieta, Mexico to a warehouse in Arizona, and it was equipped with electric lighting, a drainage system and a trolley for moving the drugs. US anti-drug officials described it to the newspaper as “something out of a James Bond movie,” perhaps because access to the tunnel on the Mexican side was provided by a “hidden switch inside the luxury home that, when activated, boosted a pool table and the concrete slab below it high into the air to open the way to a narrow shaft below.”

SEE ALSO: Coverage of US/Mexico Border

Since then, dozens of tunnels have been discovered along the border — many of them incomplete, and many of them linked to the powerful Sinaloa Cartel. Its top boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, famously escaped from a maximum-security prison by way of an elaborate mile-long tunnel in July 2015.

One of the biggest narco-tunnels ever discovered in the United States was found in April 2016. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, it ran half a mile from a house in Tijuana, Mexico to an industrial property in the San Diego area, and it was equipped with lights, rails and a ventilation system. Authorities indicated the tunnel was likely used to move multiple tons of drugs that included marijuana and cocaine. By all indications, this method will remain a popular option for smuggling narcotics across the border.

Catapults

Another ancient technology adapted for modern use, drug trafficking groups do not seem to have adopted the catapult with the same zeal as the tunnel. There is, however, at least one documented case — captured on grainy surveillance camera footage — in which suspected smugglers appear to load packages of marijuana into a large contraption on the Mexican side of the border and launch them into the United States. A Mexican official told the Associated Press the catapult was capable of flinging more than four pounds of marijuana over the border at a time.

Mexican authorities have discovered several other catapults suspected of being used for drug trafficking in recent years. But the relative inefficiency and inaccuracy of these machines means that they are unlikely to attain widespread use as a method for transporting drugs across the border.

Cannon

The shortcomings of the catapult method do not appear to have deterred traffickers from seeking ways to shoot drugs from Mexico into the United States. Authorities in the Mexican state of Sonora recently discovered a vehicle modified to serve as a mobile air cannon capable of launching packages of drugs across the border. It is not clear whether the apparatus — described by the news outlet Fusion as something that looked like it “came out of the Mad Max movie” — was ever used, nor is it clear if it even functioned as intended.

There are other documented instances in which traffickers have used cannon to launch drugs across the border, including another truck-mounted device discovered by Mexican authorities in 2013. However, the conspicuous appearance of such contraptions, combined with the substantial amount of effort they likely take to build and operate, make it unlikely that machines like these will come into widespread use by trafficking groups.

Ultralight Aircraft

Using aircraft to fly drugs over the US border is nothing new for Mexico-based trafficking groups. Decades ago, the late Juarez Cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes earned the nickname “Lord of the Skies” (“El Señor de los Cielos”) for the fleet of small airplanes his organization used to ferry drugs from Mexico to the United States. More recently, however, trafficking groups have begun to use “ultralight” aircraft in fly-by-night operations. These machines are much smaller and slower than their full-size counterparts, and due to their limited range they are typically used for recreation rather than transportation. But crime groups have begun outfitting ultralight aircraft with special equipment like all-terrain landing gear and extra cargo space to enhance their ability to stealthily carry illicit loads over the border.

SEE ALSO: Mexico News and Profiles

Ultralight aircraft typically fly relatively lower to the ground, which — along with their small size — makes them difficult to detect. And in addition to requiring relatively little training to operate, they are fairly cheap and easy to construct, increasing their appeal for traffickers. Moreover, these vehicles can carry hundreds of pounds of drugs at a time. These advantages make ultralights an economical option for enterprising smugglers, and authorities expect their use in drug trafficking to continue, or even increase, in the future.

Drones

The rapid growth in the market for commercially produced unmanned aircraft systems, commonly referred to as “drones,” has been accompanied by a simultaneous increase in their use by drug smugglers. In August 2015, two men pleaded guilty in US court to receiving a package of 28 pounds of heroin that was flown across the border from Mexico using a drone. Federal authorities told the Los Angeles Times that the case was “the first cross-border seizure by US law enforcement involving the new smuggle-by-air tactic.” Earlier that year, a drone carrying six pounds of methamphetamine crashed in Mexico just south of the US border. And according to Popular Mechanics, there had reportedly been more than one hundred similar attempts during previous years to use drones to carry drugs over the border.

Still, officials say that drone-based drug trafficking has its limitations. US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spokesperson Amy Roderick told the Los Angeles Times in 2015 that drones “will only allow a small amount of drugs to be flown at a time, and that coupled with the ease of detection, does not make this method very profitable to these drug trafficking organizations whose motivation is money.”

***** From the Center of International Maritime Security:

Drug cartels today are much more organized, adaptive, and strategic. Over time, they have acquired vast financial resources that allow them to invest in technologies geared towards providing them with a strategic edge. Drug cartels have learned to adapt to a changing environment where law enforcement authorities and militaries are also seeking to find their own effective ways of disrupting the flow of illicit drugs. Technology has become a source of competitive advantage and both drug cartels and militaries have been investing in engineering and technological tools that will allow them to counteract one another.

On one side, drug cartels attempt to optimize their operational efficiency while mitigating the risk of detection, seizure, and capture. On the other side, we have law enforcement and militaries’ efforts to improve their surveillance and detection capabilities. This race to out-flank and counteract one another has led to the development of narco-submarines.

During the past twenty years, Colombia’s various drug cartels have engaged in investing in and developing narco-submarine technology that will yield a competitive edge. Over time, their increasing need to evade capture and confiscation of narcotics led drug cartels to move away from using go-fast boats and planes, and instead turn towards developing in-house, homemade, custom built narco-submarines.

A narco-submarine (also called narco-sub) is a custom-made, self-propelled vessel built by drug traffickers to smuggle their goods. Over the years, their engineering, design and technology have improved, thus making them more difficult to detect and capture. Moreover, from a cost-benefit perspective, the yielded benefits are far superior to the associated costs of building these vessels.

Although militaries and law enforcement agencies have become progressively collaborative in their efforts to reduce the flows of narcotics, the use of narco-submarines enables narcotics to continue to reach their destinations while reducing the probability of detection. Albeit, there have been some confiscations of narco-submarine vessels over the last several years. These appropriations in turn have led to our understanding of how narco-submarines are designed, engineered, and used to deploy narcotics.

Cocaine smuggling from the Andean region of South America to the United States generates yearly revenues in the high tens of billions of dollars (e.g. 2008 UN estimate of USD $88 billion retail) and over the last thirty-five years has produced in the low trillions of dollars in retail sales. The use of narco-subs and related vessels represents one component of a broader illicit distribution strategy that also relies upon go-fast boats, airplanes, the hiding of narcotics inside bulk containers and smaller commodities, drug mules, and other techniques to covertly get this high value product into the U.S.

In fact, as of June 2012, maritime drug smuggling accounts for 80% of the total illicit flow from the Andean region into Honduras, Mexico and other mid-way transportation regions prior to entry into the U.S. About 30% of the maritime flow is estimated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to utilize narco submarines. Overall, however, maritime interdiction rates are very low. In March 2014, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command testified to Congress that:

“Last year, we had to cancel more than 200 very effective engagement activities and numerous multilateral exercises, Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And because of asset shortfalls, Southcom is unable to pursue 74 percent of suspected maritime drug trafficking, the general said.

“I simply sit and watch it go by,” he continued. “And because of service cuts, I don’t expect to get any immediate relief, in terms of assets, to work with in this region of the world.”

As a result, it can be seen that narco-submarines and related maritime drug trafficking methods are being carried out with relative impunity, with only about 1 in 4 craft presently being interdicted.

Per the testimony of Rear Admiral Charles Michel, JIATF-South Director, in June 2012, the following statistics pertaining maritime contact numbers and interdictions are provided:

JIATF-South detected an SPSS [Self-Propelled Semi-Submersibles] at sea for the first time in 2006. By 2009, the interagency detected as many as 60 SPSS events were moving as much as 330 metric tons per year. Prior to 2011, SPSS had only been employed by traffickers in the Eastern Pacific. However, since July 2011, JIATF-South has supported the disruption of five SPSS vessels in the Western Caribbean, each carrying more than 6.5 metric tons of cocaine.

There have been a total of 214 documented SPSS events, but only 45 were disrupted due largely to the difficulty of detecting such low-profile vessels.

The numbers of these vessels which now exist is also highly debatable with potentially dozens of them being produced every year by criminal organizations in Colombia such as the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), Rastrojos, and Urabeños. One point greatly influencing the numbers of these vessels which exist at any specific time is if they are utilized once and then scuttled after their delivery (the traditional U.S. military viewpoint) or if they are utilized multiple times (the traditional Colombian military viewpoint). Depending on the perspective held, greater or lesser numbers of narco subs would be required to be produced each year to replenish the vessels lost due to capture, accidental sinking, intentional-scuttling to avoid capture, and, potentially most importantly, at the end of a delivery run.

What is known is that the capability of these vessels has grown over the last two decades with their evolution and, if the Colombian cartels’ dream of making the journey (using fully submersible narco-subs) to West Africa and Europe is realized, such subs would very well represent a valuable cross Atlantic trafficking resource that would not likely be scuttled at the end of such a profitable illicit trade route.

Given this context concerning the immense values associated with the cocaine trade to the U.S. and the large amount of these illicit drugs not being interdicted during the initial leg in their journey to the United States, we have written a paper, “Narco-Submarines – Specially Fabricated Vessels Used For Drug Smuggling Purposes”, soon to be released by the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) and intended to be an initial primer on the subject of narco-submarines, that is, those specially fabricated vessels utilized principally by Colombian narco traffickers and developed to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. illicit drug market.

This work is anticipated to appear in the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) website as unclassified research conducted on defense and security issues that are understudied or under-considered. The work contains a preface written by Dr. James G. Stavridis, and a number of essays written by U.S. Navy Captain Mark F. Morris, Adam Elkus, Hannah Stone, Javier Guerrero Castro, and Byron Ramirez discussing and analyzing narco-submarines. The paper also comprises a comprehensive photo gallery, arranged in chronological order, which allows the reader to observe the evolution of narco-submarine technologies. It also contains a cost benefit analysis of using narco-submarines, as well as a map and a table that highlights where these distinct narco subs were interdicted. The data that we came across seems to propose that cartels have been using different types of narco-submarines concurrently; hence, they seem to be employing a mixed strategy.

This study is important and relevant to the present challenges faced by law enforcement authorities and militaries. This effort seeks to add value to the existing literature on the subject as it contains several essays which describe the complexity of the challenges that narco-submarines present. The document also provides the background and context behind the emergence of these vessels. Furthermore, the work illustrates the evolution of narco-submarine technology and the advances in their design, features, and technical capabilities.

Finally, it is important that we collectively consider the potential of these types of vessels to transport more than just narcotics: the movement of cash, weapons, violent extremists, or, at the darkest end of the spectrum, weapons of mass destruction.

While this is a volume that will be of general interest to anyone with an interest in global security, the intended readers are military, homeland security, and law enforcement personnel who wish to learn more about these vessels and their respective capabilities. Policymakers and analysts may also find the work useful for understanding the detection and interdiction challenges that these vessels generate. Increasing the area of knowledge about narco-submarines should enrich and deepen our understanding of the threat they pose to our domestic security, and indeed to the global commons.