“Senor Escobar has shown you great confidence. This cargo is worth more than you, your home and your family put together.
- Oh, be sure, be sure, - Señor Garcia muttered in fright, - preparations for the operation were carried out for a long twenty months, but the transition itself will take less than twenty days. We are all set. A crew of the most experienced people on the entire coast has been recruited.
"Is this your Ballena?"
The representatives of the drug cartel exchanged glances and stared in bewilderment at the blue-green oblong structure that outwardly resembled a dead whale.
“Eres un maldito komekosos,” the elder of the visitors said shortly, lifted the left leg of his trousers and unbuttoned his pistol holster.
- No, please listen, seniors! - Old Garcia in despair raised his hands to the sky. - In the name of all saints! The work was done wonderfully well. This is a super ship that can reach California in three weeks. The deck of this boat rises only a few centimeters above the water - it is practically undetectable by the Coast Guard radars. Ballena will not be heard by sonar. Outwardly, it looks like a large shark or whale, and in a storm it completely merges with the ocean. An automatic navigation system is installed inside. Two diesel engines accelerate the boat in a semi-submerged state up to six knots. Cooled exhaust. Collapsible design! The vessel can be secretly delivered by three trucks to any point on the coast for loading and going to sea.
- Your ###! The senior señor inhaled enthusiastically on his cigar and spat on the white beach sand. - This is the coolest thing I've ever seen.
“When the Ballena gets to the US coast,” mechanic Garcia smiled sadly, “the baby will have to be flooded. The sea will forever swallow my one-time masterpiece.
- Stop chatting. Get Ballena ready for launch.
- What, right now?
- There is no need to waste time. Call your amigos, load 10 tons of powder. The boat must go out to sea before dawn.
… Alas, the unlucky sailors failed to get to California. On August 23, 2007, a homemade semi-submerged vessel chock-full of cocaine was intercepted by a US Coast Guard corvette 120 miles west of the Mexican coast.
Repin's painting "Swam" - rowing all night, but forgot to untie the boat! USCGC Midgett Cutter Welcomes More Mariners
- No! yelled old Garcia, his hands tied, as clods of dirt fell on his head. - I know one more way: you can tow the capsule behind the stern of an ordinary trawler. So it will be completely imperceptible …
But no one listened to him anymore. Heart-rending screams gradually subsided under a thick layer of earth: the amigo did not justify the trust of Senor Escobar.
Short facts and statistics
According to official figures, the volume of drug trafficking from Colombia to North America is 550 tons of cocaine per year. Two-thirds of all shipments go across the Pacific in homemade drug submarines and semi-submersible ships. The news of the discovery of the skeleton of another "submarine" off the coast of Mexico or the United States no longer surprises the authorities. More than 80 cases of such "transportation" of cocaine are registered annually. The transcontinental scheme with the supply of the "white death" works like a clock.
Each detected sample of drug courier vehicles amazes specialists with its sophisticated imagination and technical perfection. The local Colombian Kulibins thought through everything to the smallest detail: modular design, air conditioning system, periscopes, night vision cameras, electrochemical protection of the hull from corrosion, radio station, inertial navigation aids and autopilot, crew of 2-3 people, cruising range of about 5000 km!
Seaman Columbus
Mini-submarines do not lend themselves to effective detection: they have too low background noise. The semi-submerged fiberglass hull is not detected by radars and is difficult to detect visually against the background of ocean waves. The most advanced of them are capable of diving several meters in depth, imitating the behavior of whales, whose migration routes lie along the western coasts of Mexico and the United States. A whole logistics chain has been deployed along the route of the drug submarines - fishing boats and small yachts scurrying in abundance in that area of the ocean, which provide the boat with fuel, fresh water and food.
The cost of building one submarine is estimated at several hundred thousand dollars ("advanced" models cost two million and more) - and such a "boat" will certainly be flooded at the end of the route. The "crew", recruited from local fishermen, at the end of the voyage will receive an average of three thousand dollars per person. But the end justifies the means: for its first and only successful voyage, the boat delivers a "cargo" worth about a billion dollars to the coast of North America!
Like other spheres of life, drug trafficking is influenced by new technologies. Not so long ago, the US Coast Guard issued an alarming statement about the emergence of unmanned (!) Marine vehicles designed to deliver drugs across the ocean.
Colombian "nanotechnology"
Despite all the seeming absurdity of semi-submerged boats "balancing" on the border of two environments, they find more and more success with customers, and, therefore, the idea is not as stupid as it is commonly believed. A low-seated vessel with a minimum headroom exhibits moderate stealth combined with minimal cost. The most suitable tool for conducting covert operations with a criminal bias.
However, many drug cartels prefer to work in the old-fashioned way: they attach a towed capsule with cocaine to a trawler or a tourist yacht and calmly go to the shores of the United States, without the slightest suspicion of the true destination of the flight. At the slightest danger, the crew records the coordinates and cuts the tow rope (some "torpedoes" are specially equipped with a radio beacon in case of such force majeure). After passing through the inspection, the vessel will return to the specified point, the scuba divers will find a "torpedo" in the shallow water and continue their way to their destination.
However, the scope of semi-submersible boats is not limited to South America. On the other side of the Earth, craftsmen build no less curious "masterpieces".
Military surface submarines
In 1983, as a result of another military clash off the coast of the Korean Peninsula, an unusual boat "Racoon" was in the hands of the South Korean Navy. Lightweight 9-meter structure made of wood and plastic with a displacement of 5 tons, capable of changing its own draft, almost completely disappearing under water. The speed of the boat on the surface reached 40 knots, in a semi-submerged state - 12 knots. The purpose of the strange boat is the covert transfer of a sabotage group of five people with personal weapons and equipment to the enemy's coast.
The find greatly alarmed the South Korean military, forcing them to reconsider the existing concepts of coastal protection. In the absence of high-tech weapons, full-fledged air and naval forces, the DPRK relied on special forces - hordes of fanatical "ninjas" with AK-74s, perfected martial arts techniques and a steel faith in victory. This is where the fleet of numerous semi-submerged boats came in handy!
North Korean boat type SP-10 (SILC)
The Racoon (or its more modern versions of the SP-10, Taedong-B or I-SILC) cost mere pennies compared to modern warships. At the same time, they have good secrecy, allowing numerous special forces units to secretly penetrate the territory of South Korea and Japan.
Despite all their primitiveness, such means pose a truly serious threat: to effectively counter semi-submerged boats, the enemy will need to spend disproportionately large resources. And it is far from the fact that the efforts will lead to the desired result - it is enough to look at the situation with the breakthrough of miniature drug submarines to the coast of North America.
The idea of semi-submersible boats was appreciated outside of North Korea. In 1996, two similar boats made by the DPRK were purchased by Vietnam. In 2002, another batch of weapons consisting of two mini-submarines and three semi-submersible boats ("Taedong-B and C") was delivered to Iran, which caused alarm in the US Navy.
On December 18, 1998, another find followed off the coast of the Korean Peninsula: a new boat of improved design Improved-SILC (I-SILC) was discovered in the sea, 150 km south-west of Busan. Nearby in the water was the body of a North Korean sailor (most likely, there was a short fire contact, which the official press release tactfully kept silent about: a North Korean Navy boat accidentally ran into a South Korean frigate).
A modern modification of semi-submerged boats is capable of carrying two small 324-mm torpedoes, which makes it possible to use them not only as sabotage, but also strike means in the coastal zone.
Multi Role Combat Craft (MRCC)
Not only rogue countries are engaged in the creation of semi-submerged boats for the covert transfer of special forces. The idea aroused interest in the United States, where the MRCC and Sea Lion projects (an 8-seater landing craft with two inflatable boats in the stern compartment) were developed. Sweden (SDV project) and Russia (diving boat DCE Seek Carrier 8 with a payload of 1200 kg) have their own developments.
When it comes to Russia, our "Kulibins" have no equal - the issue of creating semi-submerged missile boats on hydrofoils (!) Was considered in our country back in the 60s (project 1231). The main challenge was to combine the requirements for a light speed boat with a heavy waterproof diving hull. The question arose about the need to build such a large and technically complex ship according to such an unusual scheme, suitable only for light boats of smugglers and saboteurs. In the end, the arguments of common reason prevailed, and further work on project 1231 was abandoned.
Project 1231 experimental small submersible rocket ship.
Surface displacement of 400 tons. Surface speed 38 knots. Armament - 2-4 anti-ship missiles P-25
At the Euronavale-2010 naval show, the French concern DCNS presented a similar concept of the light semi-submerged corvette SMX-25, created using modern technologies. However, despite its high secrecy and strange appearance, the SMX-25 was left without attention - by definition, corvettes are designed to carry out patrol service near their native shores. And nobody is going to "bother" much about their design.
It should be noted that all projects of low-draft ships and boats date back to a common ancestor - the legendary battleship USS Monitor, created during the American Civil War. The depth of the "Monitor" was only 0.6 meters, which made the ship difficult to detect and hardly vulnerable to enemy artillery. However, effective on rivers and in the coastal zone, the monitors proved to be unsuitable for warfare at sea. Waves swept through the ventilation pipes, gradually filling the ship with water and sending it to the bottom.
A hybrid scheme with a low side is of little use for large ships, but it is quite successful in artisanal conditions. This demonstrates the undoubted commercial success of semi-submerged boats among smugglers and "fur seals".
French concept SMX-25