Drug smuggling

The Coast Guard is catching more drug-running subs, but most 'very stealthy' narco subs are probably going undetected

Through September this year, Colombia's navy had captured 14 "narco subs" on the country's Pacific coast — more than triple the four it captured all last year and another sign of drug traffickers' ingenuity. Colombia is not alone. The US Coast Guard reported in September 2017 that it had seen a "resurgence" of low-profile vessels, the most common kind of "narco sub," capturing seven of them since June that year. "We're seeing more of these low-profile vessels; 40-plus feet long ... it rides on the surface, multiple outboard engines, moves 18, 22 knots ... and they can carry large loads of contraband," Coast Guard commandant Adm. Karl Schultz told Business Insider this month during an interview aboard the Coast Guard cutter Sitkinak in New York harbor. "They're very stealthy in terms of our ability to see them from the air [and] to detect them by radar," Schultz added.