Tag Archives: SPSS

SPSS Art

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Dubbed either self-propelled semi-submersibles (SPSS) or low-profile vessels (LPVs), “narco subs” have gone from being a unicorn type of thing discussed only in Clive Cussler books to the real deal, especially when it comes to the Eastern Pacific, where they seem to be the vessel of choice running coke from South America to transshipment points in Central America.

Since they first started popping up in 2006, these craft have become an almost weekly thing in the past few years. The USCG and SOUTHCOM assets stopped almost 40 such boats in 2019, this number continued into 2020 where, across four days in mid-May Southcom stopped three narco submarines in the same week (remember the “Alto su barco” incident?), and showed no sign of stopping if you look at the typical patrols done by cutters throughout 2021-22.

Almost every recent EastPac patrol by the Coast Guard (or Fourth Fleet with a USCG LEDET aboard) shows off images of an LPV stopped with a gleaming white cutter in the background.

USCGC Northland (WMEC 904) interdicts a low-profile vessel in the Eastern Pacific Ocean in August 2021. The Northland crew returned to Portsmouth Monday, following an 80-day patrol in the Eastern Pacific Ocean in support of the Coast Guard Eleventh District and Joint Interagency Task Force South. (U.S. Coast Guard photo)

This translates into a whole series of art produced as part of the U.S. Coast Guard Art Collection in the past few years on the subject:

Tall Ship Getting it Done

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The buque escuela BAE Guayas (BE-21) is a 1,300-ton Class A Tall Ship operated by the Ecuadorian Navy. Built in Spain in the 1970s to a design similar to the circa 1930s Blohm & Voss segelschulschiffs (like Gorch Fock, USCGC Eagle, and the NRP Sagres) she is a direct sistership to the training ships Gloria (Colombia), Simón Bolívar (Venezuela), and Cuauhtémoc (Mexico).

A steel-hulled three-masted barque capable of hoisting 15,200 sq. ft. of canvas with a 700hp Detroit diesel “steel topsail” for when the wind is calm, she is beautiful, akin to a flying cloud on the water.

With a crew of some 155, she can carry 80 naval cadets and is frequently used in trips overseas to show the country’s flag and has visited over 60 countries in the past 40 years, cruising in excess of 500,000 miles on 30 training cruises from Vladivostok to Boston.

However, she is still a naval vessel, with a small arms locker, and capable of conducting real-world missions in required. Case in point, she just popped a narco sub roaming in the Eastern Pacific.

The tall ship’s crew boarded the vessel, impounded a cargo of moody blow, and arrested four including three Ecuadorians and a Colombian.

All in a day’s work.

Bravo Zulu, Guayas.

All tricks, no treats: Coasties chalk up another sneaky narco sub, making 43 total

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The Alameda, California-based USCGC Waesche (WMSL-751), one of the new 418-foot Legend-class National Security Cutters, offloaded 39,000 pounds of cocaine Thursday at Naval Base San Diego– including a large bust from a narco sub.

The self-propelled semi-submersible, or SPSS, was stopped in the Pacific Ocean off Central America on September 6.

Upon sighting the vessel, the cutter launched two fast pursuit boats with boarding teams and an armed helicopter crew to interdict the SPSS. Five suspects, apprehended by the Coasties (where are you going to go in open ocean?) attempted to scuttle the dope boat as water filled the smuggler to just below the helm.

Waesche crew members boarded the sinking vessel and were able to dewater it using portable pumps, allowing boarding officers to safely remove over 5,600 pounds of cocaine from the SPSS. It is the sixth such submersible captured this year by the service and the 43rd total.

According to a fact sheet from the service, Coast Guardsmen apprehended a total 585 suspected drug smugglers in Fiscal Year 2016– a new record for the service, up from 503 suspected drug smugglers last year.

Colombia’s finest (unterseeboots)

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HI Sutton, who has been kinda enough to mirror some of our posts from LSOZI before at his excellent Covert Shores blog (and I do recommend going over there and checking it out regularly) penned a piece for Foreign Brief on the evolution of Narco Subs, which included this dope (no pun intended) info graphic (click to very much big up!)

2400-x1152

2400-x1152

From the article:

2016 looks set to be a bumper year for narco-sub incidents.

Just last month, Colombian security forces discovered a 15-metre narco-sub in the jungle near the Pacific coast. A few weeks earlier, the U.S. Coast Guard published footage of a narco-sub intercepted off the Panamanian coast with 5.5 tonnes of cocaine on board, valued at $200 million. In March, an abandoned narco-sub was found stranded on a reef off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, its load of narcotics already unloaded by drug smugglers.

More here.

Scratch one narco sub

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P-3s are still out there busting subs everyday...just in a different livery

P-3s are still out there busting subs everyday…just in a different livery and with no Mk46s

A Customs and Border Patrol Air and Marine Office P-3 Orion Long Range Tracker found a self-propelled semi-submersible vessel (SPSS/dope sub) in the Eastern Pacific Ocean that led to the arrest of four smugglers and the boat being lost at sea with 6 tons of blow on board. Street value was $193 milly.

As noted by CBP in their presser:

The crew aboard a P-3 Long Range Tracker detected a self-propelled semi-submersible vessel Mar. 2, while conducting counter-narcotics operations with Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) South.

The task force coordinated an interdiction of the semi-submersible with a U.S. Coast Guard vessel in the area while the AMO crew maintained constant visual surveillance. Upon interdiction, the U.S. Coast Guard arrested four individuals operating the vessel.  The semi-submersible became unstable and sank.

“This type of cooperation and teamwork produces these kinds of results where suspects are arrested and narcotics prevented from reaching U.S. shores,” said Director John Wassong at the National Air Security Operations Center – Corpus Christi. “Our crews will continue to take every opportunity to disrupt this type of transnational criminal activity.”

CBP operates two types of P-3s: 11 P-3 Airborne Early Warning, or AEW, and 3 P-3 Long Range Tracker, or LRT, aircraft flying from Corpus Christi, Texas, and Jacksonville, Florida.

CBP’s LRTs, called “slicks” by the service to differentiate them from the AN/APS 145 radar-equipped AEWs, are former USN P-3As that have landed most of their ASW and ASuW suite, replacing them with an electro-optic ball with night vision and FLIR capabilities, APG 66 air search and SeaVue marine search radars used for detecting and tracking targets of interest.

Over 40 years old, the 14 Orions flown by CBP have been extensively reworked in recent years and are expected to remain in service for another two decades.

Mini sub off Ft. Lauderdale?

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Beachcombers in the Highland Beach area came across a 20-foot long submersible like object stuck just offshore.  A Texas man saw it on Oct. 26 and, thinking it was a buoy, swam out 150 yards and photographed it, seeing a 6cyl engine and battery inside and a prop at the tail. Two hatches were open but no one was inside. Then he alerted police and the USCG who investigated it but left it in place.

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Putting a light on the object to mark it, a few days later it washed ashore, where others photographed it before it was moved by a tractor off the beach where DHS is picking up the investigation.

delray-beach-drug-sub-1 delray-beach-drug-sub-2.jpg w=625&h=352&crop=1 WPTV_SUBMARINE_HIGHLAND_BEACH_1446747514557_26311119_ver1.0_640_480 fl-mysterious-sunken-vessel-off-highland-beach-007 fl-mysterious-sunken-vessel-off-highland-beach-010
Narco boat? Part of a migrant vessel? North Korean supersub? Who knows.

From the Sun Sentinel

U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Commander Eric Pare said the vessel could have been used to smuggle drugs into the country, though Pare said that is very unlikely.

“We have had these cases in the past,” Pare said, referring to drug submarines. “But they’re usually in the deep Caribbean, off the coast of South America or the eastern Pacific on the Mexican side; [or] the Pacific coast. It’s extremely rare to see something like this this far north.”

Inside the sneaky dope sub

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The Coast Guard Cutter Stratton crew seizes cocaine bales from a self-propelled semi-submersible (SPSS, a/k/a/ sneaky dope sub, a/k/a narco nautilus) interdicted in international waters off the coast of Central America, July 19, 2015. The Coast Guard recovered more than 6 tons of cocaine from the 40-foot vessel.

Interesting footage of the Stratton‘s 35 foot LRI-II notching in the rear ramp of the big 418-foot National Security Cutter. I’ve done it on a 17 footer in the back of a WPB and it was a blast so I can only imagine the scale involved here.

More on Stratton‘s epic 8.4 ton seizure here.

 

 

CGC Mohawk catches 2nd NarcoSub in 13 days

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Third time’s a charm: 7 tons of cocaine seized

Monday, October 31, 2011

http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2011/10/third-times-a-charm-7-tons-of-cocaine-seized/

Posted by: LT Stephanie Young

Rear Adm. Bill Baumgartner, commander of the 7th Coast Guard District, congratulates the crew of Coast Guard Cutter Cypress during the contraband offload. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Michael De Nyse. Rear Adm. Bill Baumgartner, commander of the 7th Coast Guard District, congratulates the crew of Coast Guard Cutter Cypress during the contraband offload. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Michael De Nyse.

While some claim 13 is an unlucky number, the crew of Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk would disagree. In just 13 days Mohawk interdicted two drug subs, keeping seven tons of cocaine, $180 million wholesale, off the streets of our nation.

Mohawk, a medium-endurance cutter, interdicted the self-propelled semi-submersible vessel while on a routine counternarcotics patrol in the Western Caribbean Sea. Used regularly to transport illegal narcotics in the Eastern Pacific, this is only the third Coast Guard interdiction of an SPSS in the Caribbean.

A sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel lay on the floor of the Western Caribbean Sea Oct. 19, 2011. Photo courtesy of the FBI Laboratory's Technical Dive Team. A sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel lay on the floor of the Western Caribbean Sea Oct. 19, 2011. Photo courtesy of the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Dive Team.

The chase commenced when the crew of a maritime patrol aircraft spotted a suspicious vessel and notified Mohawk’s crew of the location.

“We were about 150 miles away so we were in one of those instances where we really needed to come up to full speed and close that gap so we could interdict this vessel,” said Cmdr. Mark Fedor, Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk’s commanding officer.

With Mohawk steaming forward, their helicopter and boatcrew launched. Joined by the maritime patrol aircraft, the assets moved in and successfully interdicted the drug sub.

“This is the second self-propelled semi-submersibles case for this crew and I am extremely proud we were able to stop millions of dollars of cocaine from reaching the streets of America,” said Fedor. “They are a significant threat to our nation and throughout Central and South America because they can smuggle massive amounts of narcotics as well as other illicit goods or people and we will continue to be out here and stand a vigilant watch.”

With the crew detained, the self-propelled semi-submersible sank along with the contraband, an act that is common as drug traffickers design their vessels to be difficult to spot and rapidly sink when they detect law enforcement.

A member of the FBI Laboratory's Technical Dive Team located at Quantico, Va., recovers bales of cocaine from a sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel in the Western Caribbean Sea. U.S. Coast Guard photo. A member of the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Dive Team located at Quantico, Va., recovers bales of cocaine from a sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel in the Western Caribbean Sea. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

Because of the shallow depth at which the sub sank, Coast Guard Cutter Cypress, a 225-foot buoy tender, initiated a search with the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Dive Team. Together the crew and dive team conducted multiple search patterns and located the sub.

“The interdiction of a third SPSS in the Caribbean brings to a close an extremely successful fiscal year for the Coast Guard here in Southeast U.S. and Caribbean,” said Rear Adm. Bill Baumgartner, commander of the 7th Coast Guard District. “Working with our interagency and international partners, we detained 98 smugglers and prevented 60,064 pounds of cocaine and 4,412 pounds of marijuana with a combined street value of $727 million from reaching our streets.”

Another Narco Sub Bites the Dust

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Mobile, Ala.-based Coast Guard Cutter assists interdiction of semi-submersible vessel in Caribbean Sea

MIAMI — Crewmembers from the Coast Guard Cutter Cypress on scene above a sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel as members of the FBI Laboratory's Technical Dive Team, located at Quantico, Va., recover approximately seven tons of cocaine Oct. 19, 2011. The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk interdicted the SPSS in the Western Caribbean Sea Sept. 30, 2011, before its crew sank the vessel. U.S. Coast Guard photo.
MIAMI — Crewmembers from the Coast Guard Cutter Cypress on scene above a sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel as members of the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Dive Team, located at Quantico, Va., recover approximately seven tons of cocaine Oct. 19, 2011. The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk interdicted the SPSS in the Western Caribbean Sea, Sept. 30, 2011, before its crew sank the vessel. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

 

MIAMI — A sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel lay on the floor of the Western Caribbean Sea Oct. 19, 2011. The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk interdicted the SPSS in the Western Caribbean Sea Sept. 30, 2011, before its crew sank the vessel. Photo courtesy of the FBI Laboratory's Technical Dive Team located at Quantico, Va.
MIAMI — A sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel lies on the floor of the Western Caribbean Sea, Oct. 19, 2011. The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk interdicted the SPSS in the Western Caribbean Sea, Sept. 30, 2011, before its crew sank the vessel. Photo courtesy of the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Dive Team located at Quantico, Va.

 

MIAMI — A member of the FBI Laboratory's Technical Dive Team located at Quantico, Va., recovers bales of cocaine from a sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel in the Western Caribbean Sea Oct. 19, 2011. The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk interdicted the SPSS in the Western Caribbean Sea Sept. 30, 2011, before its crew sank the vessel. U.S. Coast Guard photo.
MIAMI — A member of the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Dive Team located at Quantico, Va., recovers bales of cocaine from a sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel in the Western Caribbean Sea, Oct. 19, 2011. The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk interdicted the SPSS in the Western Caribbean Sea, Sept. 30, 2011, before its crew sank the vessel. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

 

MIAMI — The Coast Guard Cutter Cypress, a sea-going buoy tender, homeported in Mobile, Ala., assisted the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk, a medium-endurance cutter homeported in Key West, Fla.,with the interdiction and search for a sunken self-propelled semi-submersible vessel, commonly referred to as a drug sub, in the Western Caribbean Sea, Sept. 30, 2011.

The Cypress commenced searching for the sunken SPSS, Oct. 17. Coast Guard crews and the FBI Laboratory’s Technical Dive Team, located at Quantico, Va., conducted multiple search patterns. The SPSS was located by the dive crew, Oct. 19.

The total interdiction is approximately seven tons and valued at nearly $180 million wholesale. The crew of the Mohawk stopped two SPSS vessels in 13 days. Used regularly to transport illegal narcotics in the Eastern Pacific, this interdiction is only the third Coast Guard interdiction of an SPSS in the Caribbean. The Coast Guard’s first interdiction of a drug smuggling, SPSS vessel in the Western Caribbean Sea happened July 13.

The crew of a maritime patrol aircraft deployed in support of Joint Interagency Task Force South operations in the Caribbean spotted a suspicious vessel and notified the Mohawk crew of the location.

The Mohawk-based Coast Guard helicopter crew and pursuit boatcrew interdicted the SPSS and detained its crew. The SPSS sank during the interdiction along with the contraband.

“The interdiction of a third SPSS in the Caribbean brings to a close an extremely successful fiscal year for the Coast Guard here in Southeast U.S. and Caribbean,” said Rear Adm. Bill Baumgartner, commander of the 7th Coast Guard District. “Working with our interagency and international partners, we detained 98 smugglers and prevented 60,064 pounds of cocaine and 4,412 pounds of marijuana with a combined street value of $727 million from reaching our streets. Although we have been finding highly creative and innovative ways to make our counter drug mission successful, we continued to be challenged by the maintenance requirements and limited capabilities of our aging fleet of larger ships. One of the greatest limitations to our success is the availability of large cutters to patrol the transit zones and new cutters, designed to patrol far offshore in District Seven, will ensure we continue to detect threats at greater distances from U.S. shores and meet the demands of our robust counter-drug mission.”

Built in the jungles and remote areas of South America, the typical SPSS is less than 100 feet in length, with four to five crewmembers and carries up to 10 metric tons of illicit cargo for distances up to 5,000 miles. Drug traffickers design SPSS vessels to be difficult to spot and rapidly sink when they detect law enforcement, thereby making contraband recovery difficult.

“This is the second self-propelled semi-submersibles case for this crew and I am extremely proud we were able to stop millions of dollars of cocaine from reaching the streets of America,” said Cmdr. Mark Fedor, Coast Guard Cutter Mohawk’s commanding officer. “They are a significant threat to our nation and throughout Central and South America because they can smuggle massive amounts of narcotics as well as other illicit goods or people, and we will continue to be out here and stand a vigilant watch.”

The U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, Customs and Border Protection and partner nation aircraft and vessel crews work together to conduct counter-drug patrols in the Caribbean.

Editor’s Note: For more information on the drug sub interdiction operations, contact the Seventh Coast Guard District External Affairs Office at (305) 415-6696.