The Colombian Navy on Wednesday announced its first seizure of an uncrewed narco-submarine equipped with a Starlink antenna off its Caribbean coast.
The vessel was not carrying drugs, but the navy and Western security sources based in the region said they believed it was a trial run by a cocaine trafficking cartel.
“It was being tested and was empty,” a naval spokeswoman confirmed.
Photo: Colombian Navy Press Office via AFP
Crewed semi-submersibles built in clandestine jungle shipyards have been used for decades to ferry cocaine north from Colombia, the world’s biggest cocaine producer, to Central America or Mexico.
However, in the past few years, they have been sailing much further afield, crossing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The latest find, announced by Admiral Juan Ricardo Rozo at a news conference, is the first reported discovery in South American waters of a drone narco-submarine.
The Colombia Navy said it was owned by the Gulf Clan, the country’s largest drug trafficking group and had the capacity to transport 1.5 tonnes of cocaine.
A video released by the navy showed a small gray vessel with a satellite antenna on the bow.
It is not the first time a Starlink antenna has been used at sea by suspected drug traffickers.
In November last year, Indian police seized a giant consignment of meth worth US$4.25 billion in a vessel steered remotely by Starlink near the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Cocaine production, seizures and use all hit record highs in 2023, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said last month.
In Colombia, production has reached record levels, fueled by surging global demand.
Rozo said the use of autonomous subs reflected the traffickers “migration toward more sophisticated unmanned systems,” which are hard to detect at sea, “difficult to track by radar and even allow criminal networks to operate with partial autonomy.”
Juana Cabezas, a researcher at Colombia’s Institute for Development and Peace Studies, said that powerful Mexican drug cartels, who operate in Colombia, “hired technology experts and engineers to develop an unmanned submarine” as far back as 2017.
Drone vessels make it harder for the authorities to pinpoint the drug lords behind the shipments, she said.
“Removing the crew eliminates the risk of captured operators cooperating with authorities,” said Henry Shuldiner, an investigator for the US-based InSight Crime think tank, who coauthored a report on the rise of narco-subs.
Shuldiner also highlighted the challenge of assembling crews to sail makeshift subs described as floating “coffins.”
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