/ Xeni Jardin / 11:44 am Fri Jul 29, 2011

"Narcosubmarine" carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine nabbed in Honduras

With help from the U.S. Navy, authorities in Honduras have snorted recovered 2.7 tons of cocaine from a submarine off the Central American nation's Caribbean coast. There is more, they say: the boat's carrying 5 and a half tons, total. AP item:
The submarine-like craft is floating about 15 meters (50 feet) under the surface because the crew tried to sink it. Osorio said Thursday divers will need another two days to recover all the cocaine.
The sub was intercepted two weeks ago, en route to the US from Colombia. More from Reuters.

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  1. I’m confused.  Why recover the drugs?  Why not make sure all the bags are riped open and sink the sub?  Then whoever was running the thing loses the cost of the sub, the cost of the drugs, and the profits from the sale of the drugs.

    1. Destruction of evidence comes to mind. If they plan to prosecute they need to show it was drugs and offer the contraband up to 3rd party testing.

      1. I don’t think so, how are we to prosecute foreign nationals outside our country?  Seems more likely the recovered drugs will go to the CIA for bulk sell off

  3. @facebook-1112179617:disqus I was wondering the same thing. There’s a pollution problem when it comes to scuttling any boat, but will that cocaine do damage?

    1. Assuming that this is the alkaloid form, it would be readily water-soluble, nudge the local PH slightly in the direction of basic, and probably give anything with a suitable nervous system a hell of a trip, quite possibly a lethal one.

      At sea, dilution would probably take care of it more or less quickly; but a few icthyoid cardiac incidents in the vicinity wouldn’t be a major shock…

    2. But have either of you considered the possibility that the submarine itself, is made out of cocaine?!

  4. Yeah, they’re spending an awful lot of time and money to recover… drugs? Helicopters, skilled divers, etc. Only way to recoup that will be to sell those drugs >.>

  6. Okay, now… what’s the retail value of five tons of blow?  And I also wonder how much of the market that would cover.  Is this the coke equivalent of the Exxon Valdez?  Or does it just inconvenience a few thousand porn stars, rock singers, and stockbrokers?

      1. Thanks!  That’s useful to know.  (I won’t ask where you got the current exchange rate.  ;^)  )  That works out to, what, $90/gram?

        Now I’m more interested in NegativeK’s question.  I’ve been told we shouldn’t pour our old, expired, or unneeded medications down the sink because of pollution issues.  What would five tons of cocaine in a fairly concentrated area do to the sea life?

        And would they really mind?

    1. I can think of a technique or two to make the divers work faster, if we just happen to have a huge pile of cocaine sitting there taking up space…

    1. Easy to explain:

      Because there is not a single submarine.
      They build them in the rain forest mountains in dozens. Some are found by the DEA or national enforcers, others sink in the sea and are lost forever, others get caught, and only one like this one has to reach safe harbor to justify the whole operation.

      1. These guys need to hire some Kaizen advisors. That’s a hugely inefficient business model.

      2.  This one looks like it may have been purchased through a rogue nation. I’ve seen the ones they build in the jungles and they look no where near this sophisticated.

    2. With big drug shipments like this, the natural economic forces work out something like this: more drug runs = more risk of getting caught + more man power needed + less product (i.e. profit) transported per time spent.  Cocaine almost literally grows on trees, and needs just a bit of processing to make into a commercial product; so the Cartels are much less concerned with losing large shipments of cocaine then they are interested in maximizing the revenue earned with successful runs.

  16. What about those US Military planes that drop out of the sky full of cocaine and guns? Or the ones that get stopped at airports and are loaded with guns and drugs?

    It’s like a global shell game.

    *shifts the 3 shells so the pea is underneath the Honduran shell*

  17. You kind of have to feel sorry for some of the people involved, like the engineers and shipbuilders and sailors. Imagine running a mission like this, being involved from the planning stages to the execution. It takes months to years to get to this point, and then you get caught at the last minute. I bet the guys directly involved with the sub operations hardly even realize that they’re transporting drugs, it’s just a sub mission (not that they don’t know what they’re doing, just that they’d understandably become obsessed with the success of the mission and so wouldn’t think about it).

    1. Many of the sailors on these subs are forced to do the job. They are basically indentured servants who pay off their debt by working for the cartels. Their families are held hostage until they succeed in their mission or die trying.

  20. If you’re gonna declare a war on drugs, don’t act surprised when the drugs build their own navy to fight it.

  21. Too bad you did not provide a picture of the real “submarine.”
    The one with the story is about 20 times bigger than the little semi-submersible craft they were using.

  23. The estimated total production of cocaine is around 700-800 tonnes a year. It’s a rather sizable bust, but nothing that could really shake the market.

  25. Drug dealers are so rich they have submarines.What has made them so rich – the government which declared them illegal. The risk is the price. The riskier the business gets, drug dealers subs will be equipped with all kinds of weapons. The arms industry will benefit. So it serves the interest the arms industry that drugs remain illegal. It benefits the oil companies – because police will be flying helicopters to check on submarines. Soon the drug dealers will have stealth submarines. Make drugs legal and the drug dealers will become bankrupt, the arms industry will collapse the oil have less fuel and lubricants to sell.  Drug addicts would get drugs for 1 cent  only  So many industries survive because drugs are illegal. 

  26. Here are some more detailed articles, that answers many of the questions raised in the comments here.

    http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/20110504.aspx
    http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/20100706.aspx
    If you poke around the site, you will find articles about these cocaine subs dating back a decade.  This is not a new tactic, although the boats being built have become far more sophisticated.  When the cartels started building these things, they were not true submersibles, but had a snorkel to allow the engine (and operators) to breath.

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