Cocaine go-fasts

[Torsten]

Speedboats Are Traffickers' Tool of Choice

By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press WriterSun Nov 6,10:33 AM ET

Slicing through slate-gray waters along the shores of Colombia, a Coast Guard vessel slips into a mangrove-fringed inlet, on the hunt for speedboats loaded with two or three tons of cocaine and ready to tear full-tilt to coastlines hundreds of miles away.

Missions like this one along the perilous shores of southwest Colombia are vital as authorities grapple with the latest twist in the clandestine world of drug smuggling.

Cocaine traffickers have largely abandoned planes for boats to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Central America and Mexico for onward shipment to the United States, according to interviews with officials and a review of government reports by The Associated Press. One U.N. document estimates 90 percent of smuggled cocaine now moves by sea to North America.

The transport of choice: so-called "go-fasts," whose crews are the equivalent of the rumrunners of the Prohibition era — only these modern-day outlaws have global positioning systems, satellite telephones and custom-made 800-horsepower fiberglass boats that can do 50 mph.

Traffickers have set up a seamless cocaine delivery system that stretches thousands of miles from the coca fields of Colombia, the world's main producer, to the cities of the United States, the world's top consumer.

After the coca is processed in jungle labs into cocaine, the drugs are loaded onto go-fasts, eventually to cross the U.S.-Mexico border hidden in tractor-trailers and other vehicles.

Each cocaine-laden vehicle is a proverbial needle in a haystack for U.S. Customs inspectors who are coping with thousands of trucks that carry Mexican exports across the 1,900-mile (3,040-kilometer border each day.

Launching from Colombia's isolated Pacific coast and the more populated Caribbean shores, the go-fasts transport well over 220 tons of cocaine a year, most of it bound for the United States, according to U.N. reports.

Maritime cocaine seizures have correspondingly skyrocketed. Ninety percent of smuggled cocaine now moves by sea, most by go-fasts, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in its latest report. More than three-quarters of the 386 tons of cocaine destined for North America — most from Colombia — passed through Central America and Mexico in 2003, the report said.

The Colombian Navy, often operating with Colombian armed forces or other countries, seized more than 100 tons from January to mid-October, compared with 85 tons in all of 2004, then a record, according to Adm. Jairo Pena, commander of the Pacific fleet.

Since each load is worth millions of dollars, crews often scuttle the go-fast, its equipment and $36,000 outboard engines after delivery and take commercial flights home, say Colombian and U.S. authorities.

"For them, it's not a great expense," said Vice Adm. Guillermo Barrera, the Colombian Navy's chief of operations.

The Pacific coast of southwest Colombia, running along the edge of coca-growing Narino state, is a drug smugglers' dream.

Peasant farmers inland harvest the green leaves of the coca bush in plantations controlled by the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or their paramilitary foes. The leaves are converted into coca paste and then purified in clandestine labs into cocaine, which is hidden near the coast.

The coast, penetrated by few roads, is bisected by inland waterways, allowing traffickers to sail near the shore for more than 100 miles without having to reveal themselves in the open sea.

Raids in the area this year provide a glimpse into the scale of operations:

• In March, the Coast Guard seized several go-fasts and even a small submarine that were being built at a clandestine jungle factory.

• Two months later, the Coast Guard netted 16.5 tons of cocaine and five go-fasts in a raid at the mouth of the Mira River, located 21 miles southwest of Tumaco, Narino's biggest coastal town.

• On Sept. 10, rebels ambushed a boat on the Mira River carrying a government drug-raiding party, killing three marines and two officials from the district attorney's office.

"This is lawless country," said Coast Guard Lt. Santiago Vasquez as he surveyed the coast — a green carpet of jungle broken by soaring sand-colored boulders. Pelicans resting on the ocean swells took flight as Vasquez's patrol boat sped past.

When his boat nosed into an inlet during a recent mission, its wake caused half-submerged mangroves to sway and dance. Vasquez's men, armed with Israeli-made Galil assault rifles, saw nothing but a dense green thicket. No go-fasts here.

Later, they patrolled the bay that fronts Tumaco — where two men were shot dead execution-style on the main street the previous evening — and spotted a wooden launch carrying a load of 55-gallon barrels.

Go-fasts use a lot of gas. Even with two dozen 55-gallon plastic barrels of fuel on board, they often need to refuel at sea en route to Central America and Mexico.

"A go-fast is a gas tank used to transport cocaine," Barrera told AP, adding that some go-fasts rendezvous with fishing boats at sea and transfer their loads of cocaine.

A blue light atop the cabin of Vasquez's patrol boat was flicked on, police-car style, as the Coast Guard vessel approached the launch, piloted by a scowling man wearing a T-shirt, jeans and blue cap.

A Coast Guardsman in a bulletproof vest under his lifejacket boarded the launch. The barrels were empty, but the man lacked registration papers. The Coast Guard impounded the boat, parking it at their base in Tumaco alongside two confiscated go-fasts and a fishing boat recently seized with three tons of cocaine aboard.

"Obviously that guy was headed out to get fuel for a go-fast operation," Vasquez said. "We have just delivered an indirect blow to drug trafficking."

Go-fast crews usually number four: the pilot/navigator, two loaders and a representative of the owners of the cocaine keeping watch on their investment, Barrera said. True to their name, they go as fast as possible on the 1,100-mile trip from Tumaco to Guatemala.

Often painted blue to blend in with the sea, these are no-frills craft with low profiles to elude radar and forward hulls packed with cocaine.

If a surveillance plane spots a go-fast, the crew kill the engines to erase any telltale wake, cover the driver's compartment with a blue tarp and wait for the plane to leave or night to fall, then resume course.

Near Ocos, Guatemala — a major cocaine debarkation point at the Mexican border — fishermen string lights on their boats so go-fasts won't slam into them while shooting across the waves at night.

Traffickers favor Ocos because of its isolated lagoon. From there smugglers cross the boulder-strewn Suchiate River into Mexico largely unimpeded because of a scant police presence, according to U.S. drug agents in Guatemala.

The cocaine is also stashed in trucks and cars and driven through official border crossings into Mexico — in San Marcos province in southwestern Guatemala and as far away as Huehuetenango in the northwest. From there, Mexican cartels that control distribution in many U.S. cities usually take over the load.

In the 1980s and 1990s, traffickers relied heavily on airplanes but then ran up against improved radar surveillance. Another advantage of the go-fasts: They can hold three tons of cocaine, a load that only larger planes can carry.

The maritime smuggling routes have made Central America the world's biggest transshipment point for cocaine. The flow of cocaine through Central America increased from just under 55 tons in 2000 to 256 tons last year, according to the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City. Wrapped in bales, that's enough to fill about 17 train cars.

To match the go-fasts, the United States has given Colombia eight Midnight Express powerboats and four more are being readied for delivery, according to the U.S. Embassy in Colombia.

The fastest loaded smuggling boat seen off Colombia's shores was powered by four 200 horsepower engines and was clocked at 58 mph. The Midnight Express can do 69 mph.

Honduran President Ricardo Maduro told AP he also wants U.S. help, saying the transshipment of huge amounts of cocaine menaces his Central American country.

"The quantity of drugs, in comparison with our interdiction capabilities and our poverty, presents an enormous danger," Maduro said during a visit to New York. "Because it doesn't just involve an enormous quantity of money, but a capacity for creating violence ... and corruption."

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[woof woof woof]

Yep - it is as exciting as it sounds - this is the closest you can come to playing out your Pirates of the Caribbean fantasy! ( maybe I should start offering Go-Fast-Tours ) HE he eh........

Anyway - heh - Yep - here in Curacao, there have been many Go-Fast busts, by the US & Dutch navy.

And indeed I have seen the shift from planes to Go-Fasts. At a beach where I go to regularly, small planes used to land and drop the goods on the dirt roads nearby. Later large rocks were placed in the middle of the roads to prevent them from landing.

Nowadays we do not hear of GO-Fast busts as much as 2 to 3 years ago. They say that they managed to slow down trafficing considerably in our part of the Caribbean.

I do hear that there is a shift of Go fasts going to other parts of the caribbean.

Bri

[darkstar]

Smuggling Go-fast boat

[Legba]

50mph? try 70 KNOTS! Fun as that sounds, id rather be hooning in the MD MH 90 Helo that chases them.

USCG to Go-Fasts: Not So Fast!

Coast Guard Scores Aerial Hits Against Drug Runners

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By RICHARD R. BURGESS

Managing Editor

New Coast Guard aircraft, tactics, and rules of engagement have led to a series of successful intercepts of drug-running "go-fast" boats, marking what White House and Department of Transportation (DOT) officials say is a major turning point in the U.S. war against illegal drugs.

The Coast Guard has unveiled a new armed helicopter, the MH-90 Enforcer, and has flown it to intercept the 70-knot go-fast boats that have been easily eluding Coast Guard cutters since drug runners introduced the boats into service in 1995.

The Coast Guard also has an-nounced a change in its rules of engagement, which now allow Coast Guard aircraft to engage drug-running vessels with armed force, an option previously available only to Coast Guard cutters and boarding parties. Armed Coast Guard aircraft have not been used in law-enforcement roles since the 1920s, when they were deployed against the "rum-runners" of the Prohibition era.

The MH-90 was introduced to the public by DOT Secretary Rodney E. Slater at a press conference held in Washington, D.C.; Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and Coast Guard Commandant Adm. James M. Loy also participated in the press conference.

Small Arms and Sting Balls

An all-weather, short-range, single-rotor shipboard helicopter, the MH-90, is a militarized version of the MD 900 helicopter built by MD Helicopters Corporation. Powered by a Pratt & Whitney 206(D) turboshaft engine and designed with a NOTAR (no-tail-rotor) configuration, it can cruise at 120 knots for 2.5 hours. The 6,500-pound helicopter is equipped with weather radar, a Mk III forward-looking infrared system (with video-recording capability), night-vision devices, an external sling capable of lifting 1,500 pounds, and a rescue hoist capable of lifting 600 pounds. The crew consists of two pilots and one crewman. The crewman's principal duties include: (a) firing an M240G 7.62mm machine gun (swivel-mounted at the portside cabin door) and/or a hand-held laser-sighted .50-caliber rifle; and ( operating hand-held video and photographic equipment. MD Helicopters provides logistic support for the Enforcers.

The go-fast boats--30 to 45 feet in length and capable of ranging up to 1,300 miles--are faster than the so-called "cigarette" boats and represent a dramatic escalation in the cat-and-mouse drug-interdiction war. U.S. officials calculated that go-fast boats--which made an estimated 400 transits last year--were used to smuggle 61 percent of the illegal drugs entering the United States in 1997 and 85 percent in 1998. Use of the go-fast boats gave the smugglers an 85 percent success rate, the officials said.

During operations in August and September, the MH-90s--which operate from medium- or high-endurance cutters working in concert with 38-foot 57-knot RHIBs (rigid-hull inflatable boats)--intercepted go-fast boats on four occasions. On some missions, the M240G machine gun was used to fire warning shots across the bow, after which the .50-caliber rifle was used to disable the boat's engines. The crew also deployed "sting balls"--small grenades that dispense rubber pellets.

The MH-90 also is able to drop a net designed to disable the boat's propellers. The MH-90's armament is intended to be nonlethal--to disable the boats and/or otherwise dissuade the go-fast crews from completing their runs.

Loy credited the Coast Guard's bold tactics--introduced in Operation New Frontier--with intercepting 53 tons of drugs, including a record amount of cocaine, since October 1998. The August and September operations resulted in the seizure of more than 6,000 pounds of cocaine and marijuana.

The Coast Guard currently operates two leased MH-90s, and plans to expand its MH-90 fleet to six or eight aircraft. The two leased Enforcers are operated by Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron 10 (HITRON-10), based at the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Ala.--but scheduled to relocate to Jacksonville, Fla., during fiscal year 2000. HITRON-10 represents a Coast Guard organizational anomaly; since the end of World War II (when Coast Guard Patrol Bombing Squadron 6 conducted antisubmarine patrols from Iceland), Coast Guard aviation assets have been assigned to air stations, not to squadrons.

McCaffrey was enthusiastic about the Coast Guard's new armed helicopters. "We congratulate the Coast Guard for using a successful systems approach to field helicopters, nonlethal technology, and command-and-control equipment to meet the threat," he said. Speaking of the go-fast boats, he added, "We will make them disappear."

"Thanks to the brave and dedicated men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard, we are seeing a decline in drug use," said Slater. "Their vigilance and tireless commitment is making a difference to the American people."

MD MH-90 Enforcer]MD MH-90 Enforcer

Sting balls....fuk yeah :D