We’re taking measurements with tape measures. It doesn’t sound very glamorous or exciting. It’s not Miami Vice. Not even close. It’s more of a math problem than anything.”
Pinpoint accuracy
Hidden compartments have always been popular with smugglers. Today’s drug traffickers are no exception. “They’re very creative,” Zukowski admits. “They’ll create a false wall. They’ll create a space that looks like a fish hold, but then they put in a fake floor. Frequently, they’ll use a false fuel tank.”
LEDETs not only are trained to detect hiding places, according to Zukowski, but they also develop something of a sixth sense when it comes to suspicious spaces. To back up their hunch, they’ll request permission to investigate further. Often, that involves drilling a small hole and using a borescope — a long, thin tube with a camera on one end — to see inside. Generally, few surprises await.
Of course, they wouldn’t drill into a fuel tank. “In that case,” says Zukowski, “we would actually end up transferring fuel out of the tank, emptying it, and seeing how big the tank is or how big it measures when we look at the drawings of the ship. If the numbers aren’t matching up, maybe something isn’t right. … It’s a long process,” he says.
An interdiction involving a go-fast boat — as you might expect — moves at a quicker pace. Appropriately named, a go-fast boat might carry four 250-horsepower engines. “There’s only one reason that they’re out there, and that’s to smuggle drugs,” Zukowski says. “They can outrun the U.S. Navy ships, which is a problem.” But it’s not an insurmountable one.
“The Coast Guard has specially trained petty officers who go through a rifle course; they learn to shoot with the .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle,” Zukowski reports. These skilled marksmen can take aim from a helicopter and shoot out the engines of a go-fast boat. “And that,” Zukowski says, “is the best way to make them stop.”
In 2013, the crew of USCGC Legare (WMEC-912), out of Portsmouth, Va., confiscated 39 bales of cocaine — a wholesale value of more than $39 million — from a 35-foot go-fast vessel in the Caribbean Sea after its engines had been disabled by an effective display of airborne use of force. The interdiction was carried out as part of Operation Martillo, an international effort to counter illicit trafficking involving the use of air, land, and maritime assets from DoD, the Department of Homeland Security, and Western hemisphere and European partner nation agencies.
Rising to the challenge
“If we can find it and detect it, we can probably interdict it,” says Coast Guard Cmdr. Harry Schmidt, chief of the Coast Guard’s Drug and Migrant Interdiction Division. “The key is finding that target.”
When drug smugglers began using self-propelled semisubmersible (SPSS) vessels — low-profile vessels that typically measure less than 100 feet and can carry as much as 10 tons of cocaine — the problem of finding the target became even more challenging. “When you’re on a ship at the surface level, your horizon for your sensors is limited to a degree, so we really need what we call maritime patrol assets — the aircraft,” Schmidt explains.
In recent years, the Coast Guard has made significant strides in its ability to interdict SPSS vessels. In 2012, Schmidt reports, “We had a number of seizures not only in the Pacific but, for the first time, also in the Caribbean.” The 270-foot USCGC Resolute (WMEC-620), a Coast Guard C-130 aircraft, and a Customs and Border Protection P-3 aircraft teamed up on the successful Caribbean interdiction. The drug traffickers were detained, the vessel sunk, and almost 6 metric tons of cocaine — worth approximately $200 million — were taken out of circulation.
“Taking the drugs off the street is critically important, but our main focus is really on attacking those criminal networks,” Schmidt says. “As far as efforts that we have under way to improve our performance, really the biggest thing is the recapitalization of our fleet.” Among the tools that have been added to the Coast Guard’s arsenal are fast-response cutters. Named for enlisted Coast Guard heroes, these Sentinel-class vessels have an overall length of 154 feet and a beam of 26 feet and are capable of speeds in excess of 28 knots.
62 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2014
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