When it, rains it pours,” he says. A unit of 10 LEDET teams is based in San Diego; a second unit with eight LEDET teams is based in Miami. “We can take those teams, and we can put them on Navy ships or we can put them on foreign warships — we have partnerships with the British, with the Dutch, with the Canadians, so we’ll patrol together. When we travel as a team, we take all of the law-enforcement authority that Congress has given us with us onto the ship.”


Detection and monitoring activities fall under the tactical control of Joint Interagency Task Force South, located in Key West, Fla., which conducts interagency and international operations and coordinates information sharing. When the wait is over and a LEDET team is about to put its law-enforcement authority into action, the Coast Guard ensign will be raised and tactical control of that ship officially changes hands.


“Once we’ve shifted control, we’re reporting to the Coast Guard,” Zukowski explains. “We’re talking to a command center staffed by Coast Guard officers and enlisted personnel who have a very clear understanding of our obligations of law-enforcement procedures. They’re giving us direction, telling us how we should proceed.”


Often, the answer is slowly.


A LEDET team might have to wait for permission from the government of another country to board a foreign-flagged vessel. Once on board, Zukowski says, the most important tool for detecting drugs is at-sea space accountability. “Basically,” he explains, “what we’re doing is taking graph paper, and we’re almost recreating an engineering drawing of that vessel.


JANUARY 2014 MILITARY OFFICER 61

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