The Colombian navy announced on Wednesday the seizure for the first time in Colombia of an unmanned semi-submersible, a boat equipped with a Starlink antenna and capable of transporting 1.5 tonnes of cocaine.
The use of underwater Narco to transport cocaine to the United States and Europe has been raised frequently in this country, the largest cocaine producer in the world. These ships are built in clandestine naval sites in the jungle.
But this is the first time that the Colombian authorities have announced the seizure of a remote-controlled submarine.
According to the Navy, the ship seized near the city of Santa Marta (North) belonged to the Del Golfo clan, the largest group of narcotrafitors in the country.
He did not carry drugs, but according to the authorities and a security source in the region questioned by AFP, it was probably a test carried out by the cartel.
The semi-submersible was equipped with a technology designed “to avoid radars,” said Admiral Juan Ricardo Rozo, the commander of the Navy, by presenting the results of an international operation (“Orion”) to the press.
This discovery demonstrates the use by criminal groups of “more sophisticated systems”, which are “an increasing challenge to international maritime security”, said the admiral.
Images shared by the navy show a gray semi-submersible with a satellite antenna installed in its bow.
A spokesperson for the navy confirmed to AFP that the antenna came from the Internet supplier by Satellite Starlink, owned by the South African businessman Elon Musk.
The powerful Mexican cartels, which operate in Colombia, “hired technology experts and engineers to develop an unmanned submarine” from 2017, JUANA CABEZAS, researcher at the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace in Colombia (Indiapaz) told AFP. “Their idea was that he could (…) cross the Pacific and then automatically unload the drug so that people can recover it and transfer it to other unmanned submarines”.
Autonomous semi-submersibles, which generally cannot dive completely underwater, but are partially immersed, complicate the efforts of the authorities to identify the drug barons responsible for cocaine expeditions.
An almost record number of underwater narcos was intercepted in the Atlantic and the Pacific in 2024, according to the insight crime reflection group in the United States.
In November 2024, five tonnes of Colombian cocaine were discovered on a semi-submersible en route to Australia.
“The fact that this seizure seems to have been a +test phase +, without cocaine on board, demonstrates the will of traffickers to invest in research and development for new contraband methods,” said AFP Henry Shuldiner, researcher within Insight Crime.
