Lets see, 12 tons is 24,000 pounds or 3,072,000 8-balls. Double that after the "cut" is 6,144,000 8-balls or $921,600,000. So, yeah I can see where they would have the cash to build interstellar time dimensional space craft after a year or two.

I thought the smugglers bought all of the older decommissioned russian subs after the fall of the soviet union. When they really needed money, about ten years ago, a pilot in Crystal MN, 10 miles north of the twin cities, bought a MIG trainer fully functional jet for $25,000. No guns or bombs but 25g's for a jet was a good deal.

Greed makes people do all kinds of crazy shit.
These have been reported on for a while, but if they're proliferating it's probably because the war on drugs was won so long ago.
Like the wars on poverty literacy and littering.

Hey c'mon we litter less.

It's not nearly as difficult as it sounds. Also, these are going into any trenches or bringing up the titanic, they run just 10-20 feet below the surface. My questions has always been how they unload them in the US. I mean, you can't just drive ur DIY submarine up to the Yatch club and get a burger while the Haitians unload it....

FYI its ColOmbia if you are talking about the country

This actually isn't a new phenomenon. Some drug dealers have bought real submarines from the Russain government before, but these homemade types have made it more of a problem. Really I'm against the war on drugs and think it's a complete waste of money, effort, and time, so bah.

Some of the original ones these guys made were little more than fibreglass tubes with some guidance that were towed behind merchant vessels. Once they got close to shore the crew would climb on down into them, disconnect the line and drift in more or less.

Mind you homemade subs have been around for decades really. I'm surprised that this hasn't been going on longer.

That is neat, not to applaud the drug runners at all, but still when people want to do something, they will put their minds to it and get it done. I wish more thought was put into other things than drugs.

@Joewithay: My bad... though with my typing skills this morning, you're lucky it wasn't colimvia :)

what the hell, people still do coke? How retro. I thought it was all about the meth now.

@Darrone:

I am not from the area ... but any coast i have been too is not a straight line. There are bays, inlets, small harbors, mangrove, swampy areas, secluded beaches and so on. Probably not as bad (or pretty) as the norweigan coast but still more then enough too find a secluded spot where you can drive a truck that can carry 12 tons of cocaine and with a good enough beach too make the transfer without being seen.

So all you gotta do is find one of those spots. give the guys on the boat the coordinates and GPS does the rest. Doesnt sound so difficult to me.

@TheCyberBob:

Homemade subs : yes. Homemade subs with a significant payload : No. We are talking 12 tons of cocaine, not 200 kg. of humans.

What does surprise me is that they havent used one of those "Ready to buy" small private subs and used it as a pulling tug for a fully submerged transport container. (which could be for one use only). (damn should stop giving the bad guys ideas)

@allthosemoments: Hells yeah man! lets stop all this silly crap and just get those unregulated drugs onto the our playgrounds pronto. After all its not like these shitbags are trying to make a profit on the death and pain they promote, they just want to make sure that all those sixth graders can get their high on. It's not like drugs kill people, and since drug dealers are always model citizens, lets just open the fucking door and give them the keys to the city! That would be perfect, that way my wife wouldnt feel like she needs a damn taser everytime she goes to work in DC! Get your head out of your ass... the war on drugs may be forcing YOU to spend more, but the rest of use may like not having to worry about having the entire crop that Juan Valdez grows on his day off getting dumped on our shores.

End rant/ flamesuit on

"illegal in international waters"

America - World Police much? INTERNATIONAL waters. If we actually have the authority to pass such laws then color me frightened.

@sqeakytoy of the apocalypse: Damn typos.... the rest of US (lol, "us" or United States, depending upon how you want to read it...) may not like

Let people do drugs. If they die, oh well. If people are weak enough to bow to that influence, in my opinion they're not really fit to live anyway.

These types of craft have been in use at least a couple decades. The first I saw was a 50 foot fiberglass enclosed hull with 4 outboards. It was almost impossible to pick up on radar because there was no cabin and the freeboard was less than 12inches above the water line. The only reason we caught him was when our helo spotted him after he had run out of gas. He must have been on his return trip because he was empty.

@Redwraithvienna: True enough. I suppose it is rather rare for people to build really large personal subs. But really it's not like it's exactly hard to make a large sub that has a max depth of say 20ft. Still rather high tech for an "industry" that typically ships that stuff in balloons up peoples butts.

@Lester56:
12 tons = 24,000 lbs = 10,896,000 grams = 3,113,142 eightballs, not 3,072,000

(12*2000*454/3.5)

/math nazi

Good Idea, bad timing. Since the end of the Cold War, all those billion dollar Los Angeles Class Attack Subs have been mothballed, used on the little dolphins, or employed in the war on drugs. I know, some say a billion dollar sub is overkill for the war o' drugs. Guess someone got it right. I wonder what a torpedo costs? Whatever the price, it must be like shooting fish in a barrell.

Not sure if the 'Crazy Paco' is to the port or starboard? "One ping, one ping only Fasulli."

@MastaFalse: they arent the problem as much as the ones that supply them. If they could get their drugs (free of drain cleaner, oregano, and whatever else someone might have lying around their apartment to bulk it out) and then go off to die without ever having to interact with the public, then yeah, more power to ya. Like Amsterdam maybe, but with the wrong (read paranoid egomaniacs with short guy syndrome) people selling them, and then using guns to enforce their will, you end up with many innocent people getting hurt. Thats the biggest problem with drugs. If you could manage to get them goverment regulated, then it would be better for everyone but the current dirtbag dealers.

@sqeakytoy of the apocalypse:

While i can agree with you on some points ... the interesting question remains : What would happen if the State would hand out drugs. And i dont meant to sixth graders. But lets say : Anyone who is a drug addict gets his shots for free. (or at a very limited cost) and has to go through rehab.

The good thing would be that the drug related criminality would go back enormously. Since most drug related crimes are commited to finance the habit. So if nobody has this problem anymore, fewer will commit crimes to finance their habit. At the same time more will be able too keep a normal life (a job, social contacts, a family) and wont drift into the "i need a shot so badly i ll sell ya my first born for it" sub culture.

i know ... it would be hard too sell it after 20 - 30 years or so of "The War against drugs". But fact is : The war didnt bring us anywhere. Not in the US, not in Europe, nor anywhere else. Drugs are still flowing into all those countries cause there is a demand for them, they are cheap to produce and expansive to sell.

@nutbastard: "illegal in international waters"

You beat me to it. That statement hardly seems right.

As far as the legality of searching these or any vessels in international waters:
The Coast Guard identifies the nationality of the vessel and 99% of the time the US has a treaty with the homeport country that allows us to inspect the vessel. If no homeport can be identified, they identify the master's nationality.
This was rarely required since the masters of the smuggling vessels normally surrendered the minute we pulled up along side.

Anyone else thinks it's funny that the US Coast Guard is being out done by an Instructable? Also, nutbastard, shame on you for beating me to the punch, you know I don't have as much time to read these rticles and that's totally something I wanted to question. "We own the international waters now?"

@Redwraithvienna: Sub-mar-ine. You can't drag it onto the sand and just unload it. It would need to be an "inlet, river, or mangrove" that was veeery deep, and very secluded. There aren't a lot of such places stateside, especially on the Atlantic side.

Drag the contraband behind your boat, in a water proof container - cut the tether and let it sink when the man approaches.

Somehow I don't think this is a new idea.

"[Jabba] has no use for smugglers who drop their shipments at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser."

as my good friend penny once said: "drugs are bad, don't do drugs."

@TheCyberBob:

Are you sure that its not hard ? i wouldnt be so sure about that.

Lets just do a bit of math / geography. : the most direct way from colombia to the US would be about 1500 SeaMiles. (its easier cause costguard says they are 12knots fast).

M;ost of this would be inside the 200SM zone in which the navys of friendly nations allows the US coast guard to operate. Which basically means that you would need a sub that could do lets say +- 750SM below water. (probably more)

Which means you have to built something that can stay below water for at least 17 hours (leaving and entering the 200sm zone around Colombia and the US)

More would probably better since you also have to navigate between Mexiko and Cuba,

So you probably would need a Sub that can stay underwater and move with 12 knots (more would be better) for 17 hours or more. And transport 12 tons of whatever (more is better too).

And that doesnt sound so easy to built for me.

Sure you probably can get blueprints and so on from old subs, and you have the basic knowlege of 100 years of submarine building, but still ... its difficult. Not saying we wont see those ships soon. Apperently it makes sense to built something like this and they are going this way quite fast. I am just saying it needs a lot of tech, which is not so easy to come buy in a 3rd world nation even with tons of money.

We outlined a documentary 8 yrs ago on the shipyards in the jungle where they build them. One was discovered (80ft long) after it was realised someone was tapping into a local petrol feed. The local hardware store said they bought a heck of a lot of welding supplies and there were several russians around too. That one was a full double hull with diving capacity.

[www.latinamericanpost.com]

Large loads like these sit off the coast and using gps and an encrypted radio, they offload to partners with pleasure craft that come out to meet it.

(In David Spade voice) Thug-Life!

@ Redwraithvienna that was the same spec as the one found in 2000

@crap-action-jackson:
But he made the kessel run in less than 12 parsecs!

@Redwraithvienna , that was the exact spec of the one they found. Consider it a no-brainer that they went and built several more.

Here are some pictures of it
[news.bbc.co.uk]

@Darrone:

Well sure ... but as someone else pointed out : One load of 12 tons of cocain sells for +- 1 Billion USD. (if the price he assumed is correct). So why not just beach the thing. I mean come on ... a fiberglass boat cant be that expansive. Thats like delivery costs ... they probably just add em to the sales price.

Or unload it in deeper waters with small boats (i guess that its what is done right now most of the time).

There are so many ways in which i can imagine that to work out. (and those guys too ... otherwise they probably would have given up and found a better solution)

@sqeakytoy of the apocalypse: hells yeah! lets make drug possession and distribution a capital offense! off with their heads!

idiot.

I'm against drugs, and I don't want to sell drugs -- but it sure is tempting to design and build completely badass vehicles if people are willing to pay big bucks for it.

This was capable of loading 200 tonne, although you could make more money by shipping people. Which was one avenue of exploration for the TV doc.

Before you know it they'll be training whales and dolphins to make the runs wearing little Hello Kitty backpacks filled with drugs.

[www.navy.mil]
the pic at the top was from last year, check out the guy waving

Fantastic Idea!!! Instead of paying cops to bust druggy thieves and murderers we can pay for assbags drugs! Cut off the demand... cause of course if they are free and supplied then no one would do them, oh, and pay a bunch of doctors and nurses with a bunch of medical equipment to take care of these "model citizens" instead police with guns (much cheaper than doctors and medical equipment by the way).

Na, I think I'd rather stick with "shoot the drug dealer" than any hippy "hug them and give them free drugs" idea. Ever been to Amsterdam? Nooo drug problem there, where many drugs are legal, and needles are provided to keep the druggies healthy (oxymoron anyone?) and the cost to pay for all these "free" drugs, needles, or rehab programs? Ya, that's you and me, or the legal law abiding hard working citizen of whatever country you happen to be in.

Well if the post topic pic is an example,
"Some are even painted blue to make detection more difficult."

Doesn't exactly "blend" for lack of a better term; hence why subs are never that color blue. That's a lot of money into a project only to paint it so that it seems to stand out, and not disappear.

@nutbastard: "America - World Police much? INTERNATIONAL waters. If we actually have the authority to pass such laws then color me frightened."

There are international treaties on such things. They include more boring items like how many years a transatlantic passenger liner can carry passengers before being uncertified for that role.

Since unflagged subs would be disagreeable to most governments with ocean access, this may not be much of a hard sell.

The US Gulf states have hundreds upon hundreds of miles of deep navigable water with little potential for observation. You could buy a nice big house, build a nice big dock, and drive that semi-sub right into a big boat house. Or, you can build a modified catamaran (two hulls with a gap between them) and have the sub come up directly beneath it and pass the cargo up.

The subs may be a bit leaky, but who cares? Just buy some mid-range scuba gear and motor on.